Culture news, comment, video and pictures from The Guardian
‘Sex writing feels less cringe now’: are we entering a new era of erotic literature?
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:32:58 GMT

As the Erotic Review is joined by dating app Feeld’s literary magazine and Gillian Anderson’s anthology of women’s fantasies, there seems to be a fresh appetite for writing about desire

‘Sexual liberation must mean freedom to enjoy sex on our terms, to say what we want, not what we are pressured or believe we are expected to want”, writes Gillian Anderson in the introduction to Want, the collection of essays about sexual fantasies she curated.

It’s not a new idea – in fact, Want is being marketed as an update of a similar title that came out in 1973, Nancy Friday’s My Secret Garden. But it is still clearly one that strikes a chord: Anderson’s book, in which 174 women anonymously describe their imagined sexual encounters, became an instant No 1 bestseller when it came out last month. A lot of this particular book’s success can of course be attributed to Anderson’s fame as an actor, and the fact that her own sexual fantasy appears anonymously in the collection. But there seems to be a renewed energy in sex writing elsewhere, too: the Erotic Review relaunched as a print magazine earlier this year, while dating app Feeld has just published the first issue of its new literary magazine AFM (which interchangeably stands for A Feeld Magazine and A Fucking Magazine).

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Concord collapses, Firewalk falls – it’s a brutal year for game development
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 13:53:41 GMT

Sony is shutting down Firewalk, the studio behind its live-service flop, Concord. It’s the biggest, most expensive casualty of an increasingly crowded hero shooter market – and it won’t be the last

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It’s official: after Sony pulled its struggling hero shooter Concord from sale shortly after it launched, the studio that made it will now be closing. Firewalk Studios was bought by Sony less than two years ago, as part of a strategy to improve PlayStation’s live-service portfolio. The closure of Firewalk cements Concord’s place as one of the biggest and most consequential flops in gaming history: the cost to Sony will have been in the hundreds of millions, with estimates of Concord’s development cost ranging from $200m to $400m in total.

Sony also closed Neon Koi, a developer with offices in Helsinki and Berlin, which focused on “mobile action games with epic stories” but had yet to release a game.

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‘His eye was full of blood’: the Halloween house of horrors that became a real-life torture den
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:34:17 GMT

It started as a spooky suburban attraction – and ended up leaving visitors injured and deeply traumatised. A new podcast takes a deep dive into the darkness

It all seemed like an innocent bit of fun. In the early 2000s, Russ McKamey and his then wife Carol went on TV to explain that they were spending $30,000 to make Halloween at their home bigger and better than anyone else’s. Fans queued around the block of the quiet San Diego suburb to experience fake blood, spooky props and teenage actors giving them jump scares. Until, that is, things got much, much darker.

By 2012, participants were being waterboarded, chained up in boxes and almost buried alive after McKamey decided to make McKamey Manor a more extreme, kid-free zone. “I was seeing people come out shaking uncontrollably … one guy, it looked like his nose was broken; another burst a blood vessel in his eye – it was full of blood,” says Mercedes Ann, a certified lifeguard with basic first aid training who was there to deal with the fallout. “People would have psychotic breakdowns – that’s the only time they would stop the tour. Then they would bring me in to calm them down.” She was 15.

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‘These were tough dudes – and notoriously romantic’: why lowrider soul, LA’s music and car subculture, still thrives
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 11:23:35 GMT

Lowriding cars are synonymous with rap, but their Chicano drivers prefer sweet soul music. The scene’s movers and musicians explain how they went from being police targets to esteemed cultural cornerstones

‘Low rider knows every street,” chanted War on Low Rider, their 1975 hymn to the customised cars of east and south central Los Angeles whose suspension had been chopped down to allow them to run “slow and low”. Later, Black LA films (Boyz n the Hood) and music videos (Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre) prominently featured lowriders, the camera passing lovingly over the cars’ customised paint jobs and hydraulic systems that allowed them to bounce. But the lowrider was actually invented by LA’s Mexican-American Chicano community after the second world war – and their drivers didn’t listen to rap, but “lowrider soul”, elegiac R&B songs that remain their preferred soundtrack for cruising.

Lowrider soul constitutes a paradox: lovelorn ballads aren’t what you might expect these often extremely macho drivers to listen to. “Well, these lowrider guys were tough dudes, many street-and-prison hardened, but they were also notoriously ‘romantic’,” says Luis J Rodriguez, the celebrated Chicano poet and author who grew up building and driving lowriders. “I think many of us hung on to the illusions of family and home because we didn’t have good families or homes. Those old R&B songs spoke to our depths.”

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Public Enemies: Kendrick vs Drake review – inside the beef that sent the world’s two greatest rap stars to war
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 23:20:41 GMT

Clearly neither rapper had anything to do with this deep dive into their famous feud – and it makes for a refreshing alternative to hip-hop hagiography

The sky isn’t as blue, the grass not so green, food now tastes like sawdust and life just hasn’t been as sweet, since rap superstars Kendrick Lamar and Drake ceased their epic beefing back in May. So it is with gratitude that we hip-hop heads receive this hour-long documentary rehash.

It doesn’t go deep into the music itself, a total of 10 tracks – five from Lamar, five from Drake – released between 22 March and 5 May of this year. But there are numerous TikTok explainer videos for that. Rather, Public Enemies works by paralleling the biographies of both artists, to cast light on the present state of hip-hop, the music industry and the culture at large.

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‘I can’t wait to paint myself when I’m old and knobbly’: the sensual world of Louis Fratino
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 15:45:22 GMT

His old-fashioned painting prowess and explicitly queer subject matter has made the young American artist hot property. So why are some people so shocked?

Next month, the 2024 Venice Biennale will close, and a memorable painting in the main exhibition will come down: I Keep My Treasure in My Ass, by Louis Fratino. With a title taken from a 1977 book called Towards a Gay Communism, the work depicts Fratino giving birth to himself from his rectum. It has been stopping visitors in their tracks. “I had a friend at the biennale,” says the 31-year-old American artist, “who said that people were almost queuing to stand at that painting – then grimacing or having physical reactions. Which to me is hilarious, because it’s so not naturalistic. There’s no implication of pain. It’s like a tarot card, almost.”

An unassuming figure in wire-rimmed specs, flannel shirt and New Balance trainers (who despite not being “super gregarious” is recovering from a celebratory night in a Florentine gay bar called Crisco Club that finished at 4am), Fratino is talking to me at the Centro Pecci in Prato, Italy, where an exhibition of his work has just opened. Promoted on giant banners throughout the city showing a magnified version of his tiny work Blowjob and Moon – one of which is slung over the ramparts of the local castle – the show is called Satura, and it’s his first solo show in a public art institution, rather than a commercial gallery.

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The mysterious world of Two Shell: ‘Our pranks don’t mean we’re not sincere’
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 16:30:12 GMT

They promised us an in-person interview – then sent along two decoys. So who are the enigmatic musicians who make it so hard for fans to hear their thrillingly alien music?

Two Shell, a buzzy London duo who make hyperactive yet melancholy bass music, are well known for giving people the runaround. They keep themselves anonymous, and perform with scarves and sunglasses hiding their faces. Fans are sent on digital breadcrumb trails via mysterious websites and social media posts. Their first interview, with the Face, was conducted in a chatroom of their own design, and scrubbed from the internet shortly after publication. Their second, with Mixmag, was done over email and paired with photos of a duo who fans on Reddit are almost certain are not actually Two Shell.

So I am excited and wary when I arrive at their Deptford studio to talk with them about their self-titled debut album, released last week on the big-budget indie label Young. Two Shell’s music mashes together various kinds of dance music from the past few decades – speed garage, techno, hyperpop, house, dubstep – and runs it all through a cartoon filter, making for a sound that’s fast and dizzyingly heightened. Their studio is crammed with abstract paintings and pieces of outlandish raver gear. Two tables are covered with dozens of hats, each embellished with embroidery and scraps of fabric. Two young women are sitting on a fuzzy green couch, wearing outfits that sit somewhere between avant garde clubber and first-year art student: they introduce themselves as Flat Earther and Ghost Shrimp.

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Batman who? Why The Penguin is TV’s biggest surprise of the year
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 08:01:03 GMT

Colin Farrell’s show-stopping turn, and a scene-stealing Cristin Milioti, make this DC crime series an unlikely winner

HBO’s DC show The Penguin is one of those rare treats that comes along almost completely unexpectedly, like Batman cracking a smile, or Harley Quinn making sensible life choices. Nobody really expected a show about the second banana in the dark knight’s famed rogue’s gallery to be up to much even if Colin Farrell’s performance, under all those prosthetics, in The Batman was a startlingly grimy diversion from the gloomy glamour of Matt Reeves’s elegant vision of Gotham City’s proto dark knight. But an entire series based on Oswald Cobb’s bloody rise through the ranks of Gotham City’s lurid underworld always seemed a little superfluous to the main event, a spiky little sideshow to keep us entertained, deep down in the gutter with a villainous Humpty Dumpty, while DC works out what to do with the highfalutin’ sequel.

Past the season’s midway point, and it’s clear it’s more than just filler, and could yet be DC’s most unexpected hit since Aquaman turned murmuring sweet nothings to swordfish into a billion-dollar box office splash. Farrell, who at times looks like Danny DeVito on a diet of gas station sushi and sheer spite, is clearly having so much fun as the Penguin that it might even make up for having to sit for three hours to undergo his daily transformation. This was supposed to be a novelty, the chance to see the Oscar nominee literally disappear into the role of Gotham’s most likable dirty little rat, but the twists, turns and power struggles are so fast and fabulous that spending each episode trying to spot the handsome Irishman underneath all that silicone would be like attending a Vegas magic show just to figure out how the rabbit got in the hat.

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‘Majestic brightness’: Warsaw’s Museum of Modern Art finds a new permanent home
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:00:03 GMT

After decades of nomadic existence, the Polish capital’s art temple is open for permanent business in an inspirational, light-filled new building

When Poland joined the European Union 20 years ago, our world changed. I was a student in Warsaw, and spent my savings on a train ticket to Berlin – not for migrant work, but to see the 200 masterpieces at the Neue Nationalgalerie on loan from the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In 2017, while in the US, I rushed to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The very first painting I saw was a personal delight because the artist was a woman, Paulina Ołowska, and Polish.

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50,000 Oasis tickets to be cancelled for violating purchase terms
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:01:00 GMT

Promoters said the affected tickets were bought using prohibited techniques, including acquiring more than four tickets per household and using multiple identities

Ticketmaster will cancel about 50,000 tickets for the UK and Ireland dates of Oasis’s reunion tour for violating the company’s terms and conditions in the coming weeks, the BBC reports.

The tickets concerned are listed for sale on unofficial secondary websites such as Viagogo – as opposed to the official resale partner, Twickets, where tickets can only be resold at face value. Promoters Live Nation – which is part of Ticketmaster – and SJM told the BBC that 4% of tickets sold – close to 50,000 – ended up on resale sites.

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50 Cent claims he turned down $3m to appear at Trump’s New York rally
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 14:31:31 GMT

Rapper says asked to join ex-president’s controversial Madison Square Garden event but is ‘afraid about politics’

50 Cent has revealed that he turned down a $3m offer to join Donald Trump at his controversial New York rally.

The rapper, who has previously shown admiration for the former president, spoke about the opportunity during an interview on The Breakfast Club. He confirmed that he “got a call” and had also been asked to perform his song Many Men (Wish Death) during this year’s Republican national convention for a similar sum.

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Robert Downey Jr: ‘I will sue all future executives who make AI replicas of me’
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 10:58:12 GMT

The actor who will be returning to the MCU as Doctor Doom said he believed Marvel would ‘never’ recreate him on screen without his permission

Robert Downey Jr has said he will instruct his lawyers to sue future executives who attempt to create digital replicas of him using AI.

Speaking on the On With Kara Swisher podcast, he said: “I would like to here state that I intend to sue all future executives just on spec.”

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Paul Morrissey, cult filmmaker and Andy Warhol collaborator, dies at 86
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 01:31:25 GMT

The director of films including Trash, Flesh and Women in Revolt has died in New York after a bout of pneumonia

Paul Morrissey, an early collaborator of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and the director of cult films such as Flesh, Trash and Women in Revolt, has died at 86.

His archivist, Michael Chaiken told the New York Times that Morrissey died in a New York hospital on Monday after a bout of pneumonia.

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Unknown waltz by Chopin found in library vault after nearly 200 years
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 06:10:42 GMT

The score, on a card bearing Frédéric Chopin’s hand-written name, was discovered by a curator at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York

An unknown waltz by Chopin, written nearly 200 years ago, has been discovered in the vault of the Morgan Library and Museum in New York.

The score, on a card bearing Frédéric Chopin’s hand-written name, was found by a curator in the spring, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

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Novelist and poet Paul Bailey dies at 87
Mon, 28 Oct 2024 13:47:51 GMT

The twice Booker prize-shortlisted author was best known for his novels, which included At the Jerusalem and Gabriel’s Lament

The twice Booker-shortlisted writer Paul Bailey died on Sunday aged 87, his agent has confirmed. He was best known for his novels At the Jerusalem, Peter Smart’s Confessions and Gabriel’s Lament.

As well as fiction, Bailey published poetry and nonfiction, including his 1990 memoir An Immaculate Mistake, about growing up gay in a family who believed he was “not natural”, and a 2001 biography of three gay entertainers from the 20th century, Three Queer Lives. Across genres, Bailey’s work often considers what it means to be an outsider: on the fringes of society or shunned by family. He is sometimes seen as part of the “Catholic novel” tradition, after converting as an adult.

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Empty Beds: a mural highlights the abduction of Ukrainian children
Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:54:33 GMT

Artist Phil Buehler has constructed a reminder of the almost 20,000 kids taken by Russian forces, on show in Little Ukraine, Manhattan

Does anything have more pathos than the empty bed of a child who may never return?

The question is invited by a 100ft mural highlighting the abduction of 19,546 Ukrainian children by Russia that was unveiled this past weekend in the Little Ukraine neighbourhood of Lower Manhattan, New York.

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Bossing it: first photo of Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen
Mon, 28 Oct 2024 13:14:38 GMT

The Bear actor is playing Springsteen in Deliver Me from Nowhere about the making of the musician’s 1982 album Nebraska

The first photo of The Bear star Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in a forthcoming biopic has been released as shooting begins on the project, titled Deliver Me from Nowhere.

In the shot, White is seen slightly hunched in classic Springsteen pose, complete with red plaid shirt, unruly hair and hands shoved in the pockets of a black leather jacket.

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Wish You Were Here review – a subtle love letter to female friendship in Iran
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:59:23 GMT

Gate theatre, London
Sanaz Toossi’s intimate play follows a group of friends during the Islamic Revolution of 1979 and beyond as they get married, have children and experience loss

Two dramas by Sanaz Toossi premiered in the US in 2022. English, about friends in an Iranian classroom, won the Pulitzer prize. But it is the other one, Wish You Were Here, that seems like the real love letter to friendship by the American Iranian playwright.

You do not see or feel the love for a while. Directed by Sepy Baghaei, the drama begins in 1979, with the Iranian Revolution as the backdrop, and plays out over the years of the Islamic Republic until 1991.

At the Gate theatre, London, until 23 November

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Martha review – sharp if spotty Netflix retrospective on Martha Stewart
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 14:19:17 GMT

The ‘doyenne of domesticity’ proves a blunt and at times frustratingly opaque yet always compelling subject in a new documentary

Who was the original influencer? Cases have been made for Paris Hilton, Anna Wintour, the British royal family, the first round of mommy bloggers, Andy Warhol, Grace Kelly, the Kardashians. But when it comes to leveraging the performance of one’s personal life to market an aesthetic, hinging business on pristine public brand, it’s tough to top Martha Stewart. As a new Netflix documentary directed by RJ Cutler argues, the “doyenne of domesticity” pioneered the art of selling a lifestyle – how to be an effortlessly chic hostess, a savvy cook, a glamorous gardener and a shrewd decorator, while still being a modern woman. Or, to put it in the parlance of the time during which she transformed her New York-centric catering business into a media empire: how to be a woman and have it all.

Was it empowering? Did being the self-made billionaire of picture-perfect domesticity make her a feminist? Was she ruthless, or a prisoner to her own perfectionism? The sharp yet spotty film poses many such questions and, though clearly well-sourced in Stewart’s personal archive, ends up answering few. To be fair, people are more complex than such binaries, and Stewart is famously not forthcoming on anything less than, as she loved to say, “perfectly perfect”. She can be blunt on certain points – her beloved, complicated father’s bigotry and lasting imprint of perfectionism, for one – but Martha lacks the revelatory, remarkably revealing self-awareness of Cutler’s last celebrity film, the verité-style Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry, which remains the standout pop star documentary of the decade.

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Laura Marling review – gently transcendent songs of motherhood and domesticity
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 12:13:59 GMT

Hackney Church, London
She may confess to impostor syndrome, but these tender studies of the latest stage in her life show a remarkable artist in full bloom

When Laura Marling finishes her piano-led performance of No One’s Gonna Love You Like I Can, a tender love song for her daughter, she claims to feel shy. “That was the biggest impostor syndrome I’ve ever felt singing at that piano,” the 34-year-old says. It’s both charming and ridiculous coming from this relaxed and instinctive live musician, who, half a set in, has commanded the venue with understated power. You’re struck with the sense that she is probably the closest artist her generation has to a Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez or Patti Smith – at least here in her home of England.

Marling’s guitar playing is intricate, blending lead and sitar-like tones, while her vocals – still angelic – have taken on a richer, oaken quality since she emerged a clear victor from the “stomp-clap” folk-pop landscape in her teens. She opens and closes with songs from her earlier albums, including the earthy first four tracks from 2013’s Once I Was an Eagle performed in their entirety, just with her voice and guitar.

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Breakthrough by William Pao review – the drugs do work
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:30:03 GMT

From sickle cell to the Covid vaccine – the stories behind medical innovations that have transformed lives

‘A great deal of creativity goes into making new medicines, most of it witnessed and appreciated by only a small handful of people.” This, in part, is what inspired William Pao, an oncologist turned pharmaceutical executive, to write Breakthrough, which tells the stories of some of the most critical discoveries in modern medicine.

Like many others in the field of drug research, Pao has his own story about a family illness. When he was a 13, his father died suddenly from colon cancer – an event experienced by his family as a “cataclysmic shock”. It set his course: “After Dad died, I vowed that I would dedicate my life to making a difference for patients like him,” he writes.

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Midas Man review – Jacob Fortune-Lloyd is heartfelt as Beatles’ kingmaker
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:00:03 GMT

As the ‘fifth Beatle’ Brian Epstein, Fortune-Lloyd’s performance holds an otherwise sanitised narrative together in well-meaning biopic

British actor Jacob Fortune-Lloyd stars as the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein in this uneven but well-meaning biopic. The screenplay by Brigit Grant and Jonathan Wakeham weaves the story in and around the two or three main facets of Epstein that are always invoked in every potted bio: he was instrumental in the Beatles’ huge international success (Paul McCartney would later describe him as “the fifth Beatle”), he was Jewish, and he was gay. It certainly unfurls itself on a broader canvas than the 1991 drama The Hours and Times, although that tight, intimate low-budget work, which featured David Angus as Epstein and a young Ian Hart as John Lennon on a weekend trip to Barcelona together, still stands up as one of the most nuanced and insightful works of Beatles-themed speculative fiction. But this one has fancier costumes, particularly in its final scene, where we see the Beatles in full-on flowers-in-their-hair and brocade Nehru-jacket-finery as they film a live international broadcast, which happened just before Epstein died of an accidental drug overdose in 1967, aged 32.

Clearly, the film ends on the broadcast’s triumphant note in order to give a bit of uplift to what is largely a sad story, if you take out the bits where Epstein makes a fortune for himself and the Beatles building a management business. (He also managed Gerry and the Pacemakers and Cilla Black, played sympathetically here by Darci Shaw.) Because if you subtract the success, then Epstein’s story here is a classic tale of gay martyrdom, all semi-closeted despair and suffering as he goes from cottaging encounters (which bring beatings and blackmail attempts) to a toxic relationship with an American lover, Tex Ellington (Ed Speleers), who ends up robbing and humiliating poor trusting Brian. At least his mum Queenie (Emily Watson, avoiding the worst Jewish mother cliches thankfully) always loved him, even if his father (Eddie Marsan) could never understand his son.

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Dr Strangelove review – Steve Coogan scores a quadruple cold war coup
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 23:00:40 GMT

Noël Coward theatre, London
Adding a fourth role to Peter Sellers’ three turns in the classic film, the comic excels in a fun yet unadventurous adaptation

Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire, about cold war brinkmanship tipping into nuclear conflict, seemed to be a vehicle for Peter Sellers to showboat in three central roles. It might have ended up like Carry On … to Armageddon but with the combined genius of Kubrick and Sellers rocketed into the film canon.

It takes a confident – foolish? – team to tamper with a work quite so revered, and so suited to the screen. How, for instance, do you turn the legendary scene of a pilot riding a careering nuclear warhead into credible theatre? This production achieves the dubious feat of turning an edgy, absurdist story into broad entertainment with accessible laughs, along with a few topical references and excellent performances all round.

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Anirban Dasgupta: Polite Provocation review – stealthy subversive satire
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 13:52:53 GMT

Soho theatre, London
Poking fun at Indian politicians present and past, and delighting in the UK’s decline, the low-key comic delivers some bulletproof material

Anirban Dasgupta has been a standup for 10 years – almost as long as that artform has been booming in his native India. And now, he’s run out of things he’s allowed to say. Unless, unless … Dasgupta’s show finds the 34-year-old addressing politics and religion by circuitous routes, the kind of stealth approach required, he tells us, to keep the Indian authorities at bay. If that means that most of the political jokes here are directed against figures safely distant from 21st-century power, it also brings a sly and subversive impetus to proceedings, offsetting the gentle manner implied by the show’s title, Polite Provocation.

His political gags are, ostensibly at least, non-topical: their target is Mahatma Gandhi. They may have a contemporary edge, with one or two punchlines rebounding on India’s current powers-that-be. But a fair portion are just poking fun and asking if Gandhi was a freedom fighter – or just a freedom wait-er? On religion, Dasgupta has less to say: there is a choice quip about his country’s two faiths (“Hindus, and ‘watch out for Hindus’”), and an anecdote about being caught in traffic at a recent Ganesh festival.

At Soho theatre, London, until 2 November

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‘I wanted a hit!’ Bryan Ferry on recording Slave to Love in Bette Midler’s house
Mon, 28 Oct 2024 15:13:10 GMT

‘Its first performance was at Live Aid. The drummer broke his kit, the bass was in a different tuning, David Gilmour’s guitar wasn’t working – and my mic was inaudible’

I’m not a musical detective, but I’d put my money on the inspiration for Slave to Love coming from Prisoner of Love by the Ink Spots, which I heard when I was five. My Auntie Enid’s husband was stationed in Europe with the armed forces and I think he picked up American records and brought the Ink Spots home. I still have the 78 RPM single.

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On my radar: Jacques Audiard’s cultural highlights
Sun, 27 Oct 2024 09:30:06 GMT

The film director on the music he works to, educating himself via podcasts, and why the Paris Olympics was a pleasant surprise

Jacques Audiard was born in Paris in 1952, the son of the prolific screenwriter and director Michel Audiard. He began writing films in the mid-1970s and made his directorial debut in 1994 with See How They Fall. He won Baftas for The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005) and A Prophet (2010) and the Cannes Palme d’Or with Dheepan in 2015. Audiard’s latest film, Emilia Pérez, a trans-empowerment musical set among Mexican drug cartels, won the Jury prize at Cannes and was described by Variety as “dazzling and instantly divisive”. It’s in cinemas now and will stream globally on Netflix from 13 November. Audiard lives in Paris.

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Just like heaven: the Cure’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!
Thu, 24 Oct 2024 14:00:54 GMT

Ahead of the release of Songs of a Lost World – their first album in 16 years – we rate the best of a band who combine light and dark like no other

A little overshadowed by Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me’s pop masterpiece Just Like Heaven, Catch nevertheless has a lovely, shambolic charm all of its own: its pattering drums, violin, unexpected bursts of wah-wah guitar sound as if they were recorded live, and Smith’s vocal as if it was recorded when he was half asleep.

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‘I never really learned anything from anybody’: Isabelle Huppert on 50 years in film
Thu, 24 Oct 2024 12:00:49 GMT

The acclaimed French actor answers your questions on Heaven’s Gate, Haneke and hindsight

François Ozon is a great director and 8 Women was a fantastic film. What brought you to work with him again for The Crime Is Mine? BenderRodriguez
I loved doing 8 Women and I just saw his last film in San Sebastián, When Fall Is Coming, and it’s really great. He’s very versatile. He goes from one style to the other, like a French Stephen Frears. The Crime Is Mine is more in the line of 8 Women. It’s a comedy, an adaptation of an old play that he turned into more contemporary material; something more feminist and more updated. He’s very vivid and he’s very, very, very fast, so when you work with him he gives you a certain kind of energy.

Having performed in such a wide range of films, what draws you in when selecting new projects? Is it the role, the storyline or the opportunity to work with a particular director? VerulamiumParkRanger
Mostly the director, because I always believe it’s the key piece of the ensemble. If you take material like The Piano Teacher or Elle, if it wasn’t for Michael Haneke or Paul Verhoeven, what would it be? Then it’s the ensemble. Film-making is a really collective art.

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An isolated mother breastfeeding her child during Covid: Dola Posh’s best photograph
Wed, 23 Oct 2024 13:33:51 GMT

‘I gave birth during the pandemic and was cut off from my family. It was just me and my daughter at home. That bedroom was my sanctuary, my place to hide and cry’

This was taken in the winter, a few months after my daughter’s birth in August 2020. It was during the Covid pandemic. I didn’t have any work and my anxiety levels were very high. I was isolated and my family couldn’t be there for me. It was just me and my child at home. That October, I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. My health visitor prompted me to start therapy. I hadn’t picked up a camera for months and didn’t know where to begin. My therapist suggested I document how I was feeling by writing – but I chose photography. This was the first image I took, and the genesis of a series. To me, my gaze is the longing for home, for community – and for myself. I was lost in that moment, struggling with self-identity, but I also had hope that the light in my heart would come back.

What I see in the image now is a resilient mother: a woman who has a voice and who, despite everything that’s going on, wants to bring something to life. I hoped another mother would connect with it, that it might save someone else who was going through the same thing.

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‘“Mad” Frankie Fraser told me how to get someone to talk’: how we made The Shadow Line
Mon, 21 Oct 2024 14:00:37 GMT

‘The psychopath is terrifying. The scene where he almost drowns a cat held the record for complaints for a while. But there is a humanity to the show, too’

I’d been making comedy for a decade and had a breakout success with Marion and Geoff. In 2010, I decided to swing my bat and write my first drama. I went from writing about one guy in a car to a noir thriller on an ambitious scale. It utterly transformed my career.

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‘I have plenty of rhythm when I rap, but not so much when I have sex’: Professor Green’s honest playlist
Mon, 21 Oct 2024 06:00:06 GMT

The rapper is an ‘indie grunge boy’ at heart who belts out Nirvana at karaoke. But why does he blame his nan for his early taste in music?

The first song I fell in love with
Incredible by M-Beat featuring General Levy. I grew up on a housing estate in Clapton. East London was notorious for its jungle scene. The older kids would go raving and come back on a Saturday morning, pulling faces.

The first single I bought
I hate telling this story. Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini by Timmy Mallett [as Bombalurina], from Woolworths in Hackney. I grew up with my grandmother and she made me listen to Jason Donovan, Kylie Minogue and Engelbert Humperdinck. So I blame my nan, because it was her money.

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TV tonight: can Prince William really end homelessness?
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 06:20:01 GMT

People who have been homeless discuss their experiences with the prince, plus the stunningly intense documentary Helmand: Tour of Duty. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1
A member of the royal family campaigning to end homelessness is a hard pill to swallow, but Prince William says: “Why else would I be here if not using this role properly to influence and help people where I can?” So what exactly is his plan? Well, his five-year initiative, Homewards, starts with this two-part documentary, in which he hears from people who share their lived experience as well as potential solutions to the problem. Hollie Richardson

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Lee to Music By John Williams: the seven best films to watch on TV this week
Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:00:14 GMT

The fierce Lee Miller is the role Kate Winslet was born to play, plus Steven Spielberg and more line up to wax lyrical about the most legendary composer in the history of cinema. What a bringer of joy

Lee Miller’s life is the sadly familiar case of a female artist whose work has been overlooked because of her collaboration with a famous man, in this instance as a model for Man Ray. It’s her subsequent career as a war photographer that director Ellen Kuras and star Kate Winslet focus on in their fierce film. Winslet – in a role she was born to play – is the magnetic, forthright Lee, a woman who won’t take no for an answer. When the second world war breaks out, she nabs a job taking pictures for Vogue, getting herself front and centre for the London blitz, liberation of Europe and, chillingly, the discovery of the death camps – snapping away in fury and shock at the inhumanity she sees.
Friday 1 November, 11.50am, 8pm, Sky Cinema Premiere

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The Diplomat to Lioness: the seven best shows to stream this week
Fri, 25 Oct 2024 06:00:12 GMT

Keri Russell has to handle the fallout from Russia bombing London in the gripping Netflix hit, while Zoe Saldaña is back for more as a special forces badass

The diplomatic corps is unanimous: apparently “Russians don’t bomb London”. But when season one of this drama ended, it seemed they had done just that. As we return, the fallout from the attack – personal and geopolitical – threatens to overwhelm the UK government. For now, Keri Russell’s US ambassador Kate Wyler has matters close to home to attend to: her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) is in hospital after being caught in the blast. And the behaviour of abrasive British PM Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear) is deeply suspicious – exactly what did he know about the attack? Without quite reaching West Wing levels of grandeur, The Diplomat remains undeniably gripping.
Netflix, from Thursday 31 October

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Fright club! Hollywood’s golden age goes ghoulish – in pictures
Wed, 30 Oct 2024 07:00:02 GMT

Spectres of real-life horrors haunt Raphaël Neal’s uncanny self-portraits – from a femme fatale covered in cockroaches to a leading man with blood-covered hands

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‘Things are truly scary’: the divided states of America – in pictures
Tue, 29 Oct 2024 07:00:03 GMT

Michael Dressel was born in Berlin but spent four decades living and working in the US. As the election looms, he talks us through his new book capturing a nation in crisis

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Cyclops, Martians and Myths: the art of Ray Harryhausen – in pictures
Fri, 25 Oct 2024 08:00:13 GMT

A free exhibition at Waterside’s Lauriston Gallery in Sale, Greater Manchester, examines the workings of Ray Harryhausen, one of the greatest animators in cinema history. Inspired by film-maker John Walsh’s book Harryhausen: The Lost Movies, it opens on 26 October

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Photographer Paul Lowe’s life in pictures
Thu, 24 Oct 2024 16:32:20 GMT

A look back at some of the moments immortalised by photojournalist Paul Lowe, who died in October, aged 61

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One giant leap: Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist – in pictures
Thu, 24 Oct 2024 06:00:04 GMT

From pole-vaulting migrants to a shocking family story, the four nominees for the prestigious £30,000 prize show off their best images

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Join the scrum! Tackling women’s rugby – in pictures
Wed, 23 Oct 2024 06:00:03 GMT

Ice packs at the ready! These bruising images by Alejandra Carles-Tolra were taken during a year with Brown University’s female team – and help break down gender stereotypes

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Face value: the masterly theatrical masks of Kitazawa Hideta – in pictures
Mon, 21 Oct 2024 14:03:27 GMT

A new book celebrates the Japanese masks carved by Hideta, a traditional wood-carving artist. They are for classical and contemporary noh and kyōgen theatre performances

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Scenes from the streets: international stories told on the ground – in pictures
Wed, 23 Oct 2024 07:56:04 GMT

The work of over 30 street photographers has been assembled for We Are Here: Scenes from the Streets, a new exhibition showing at the International Center of Photography in New York City. A mixture of cultural and personal narratives around the world from Baltimore to Algiers are on display until 6 January 2025

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It was all a dream: Magnum photographers go searching for paradise – in pictures
Tue, 22 Oct 2024 06:00:58 GMT

From dozing teenagers to enormous pet snakes and Audrey Hepburn jumping for joy, these images all tackle the theme of Eden – and they all feature in the Magnum agency’s print sale

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