Items include armour, banners, and two skulls taken from Omdurman battlefield
Museum officials in Sudan are hoping for the return of priceless artefacts and body parts taken by British soldiers, colonial administrators and travellers, saying they could help bring peace to the unstable east African country.
The items include valuable armour, weapons and clothing, and the banners of fighters who resisted the British force that invaded and colonised Sudan 124 years ago.
Continue reading...Friends of Nigel Stonehouse, 58, who has kidney and lung cancer, seek help with costs of transporting him to his final festival
The friends of a terminally ill man have launched a fundraising campaign to help him attend the Glastonbury festival next week.
Nigel Stonehouse, 58, from Hartlepool, was recently diagnosed with kidney cancer, which has now spread to his lungs. After receiving the terminal diagnosis, his friends wanted to fulfil his “dying wish” of attending the festival for a final time.
Continue reading...Prosecutors say allegations involve ‘young foreign woman’ who was forced to have ‘non-consensual’ sexual relations over two days
Authorities detained Oscar-winning film director Paul Haggis on Sunday in connection with allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman in southern Italy, Italian news media said, quoting local prosecutors.
The Canadian-born Haggis, 69, has been in Italy for a film festival that begins on Tuesday in Ostuni, a tourist town in Puglia, the region that forms the “heel” of the Italian peninsula.
Continue reading...Raymundo Garduno and Juan Francisco Aguilar, as well as six other people who were injured, were in van that flipped in desert
A traffic crash in Mexico last week killed two actors from an upcoming original series by Netflix and injured six other people, according to officials and media reports.
The killed actors, Raymundo Garduno and Juan Francisco Aguilar, were in a van that accidentally flipped Thursday in a patch of desert near the community of Mulege on the Baja California Sur peninsula. Other cast and crew members were hurt during the wreck, which reportedly occurred offset but during filming of the show The Chosen One.
Continue reading...Writer and broadcaster says teaching about the past must not be a way of making people feel good about themselves
Britain’s relationship with history is “not fit for purpose”, according to a leading historian who said too many pupils are still taught a “dishonest version” of the nation’s past that left out uncomfortable truths.
David Olusoga, the writer and broadcaster, told school leaders that Britain often saw its history as “recreational … a place that we go for comfort, a place to make us feel good about ourselves”, leading to ignorance about the history of its empire, and to immigration scandals such as Windrush.
Continue reading...Ex-Beatle turned 80 on Saturday, days after a brief US tour which saw him joined on stage by Bruce Springsteen
Sir Ringo Starr, Bruce Springsteen and Ronnie Wood were among stars who have been wishing Sir Paul McCartney a happy 80th birthday.
The ex-Beatle turned 80 on Saturday, days after finishing a brief US tour. The milestone comes the weekend before McCartney becomes Glastonbury’s oldest solo headliner, when he takes to the Pyramid stage on Saturday.
Continue reading...Six legislators call for return of cultural treasures held by British Museum ‘to their Athenian home’
More MPs and peers have expressed support for the repatriation of the Parthenon marbles to Greece as protesters in London mark the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Athens museum where they believe they belong.
Calls for the reunification of the antiquities, removed by Lord Elgin from the Acropolis in controversial circumstances more than 200 years ago – and regarded as vital to the nation’s cultural memory – mounted on Saturday with six UK lawmakers telling the Greek daily, Ta Nea, that restitution was the only proper thing to do. The British Museum acquired the sculptures from the diplomat in 1816.
Continue reading...At a special Tribeca film festival event, the stars of Michael Mann’s acclaimed crime saga reminisced while offering suggestions of who could play them in a remake
Any misgivings about terseness at a Q&A panel dedicated to Heat, a film in which men prefer to let their automatic rifles talk about their feelings for them, were quickly put to one side last night at the dazzling United Palace theater in Manhattan’s Washington Heights.
The Tribeca film festival event dedicated to the 1995 crime classic from Michael Mann – who couldn’t attend due to a positive Covid test, but took care to record a video message from the Italian set of his forthcoming Enzo Ferrari movie, wistfully recalling his initial pitch all those years ago at a Broadway Diner lunch – began with an out-of-the-gate standing ovation for the assembled talent: producer Art Linson, as well as stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, a couple of guys unable to get a cup of coffee in New York without a round of applause. Things only got rowdier from there.
Continue reading...A new documentary takes viewers back down the rickety stairs to the trailblazing Gateways in Chelsea
The Gateways is back. The longest-running lesbian club of all-time – the one whose actual clientele appeared in the 1968 film The Killing of Sister George; the one where Mick Jagger tried to talk the owner into letting him crash in a frock; the one that was a sanctuary to every class and sort of woman, from well-known figures such as the writer Patricia Highsmith and the artist Maggi Hambling (then an art student) to swimming-pool attendants at the Tooting Bec lido – has been given a new lease of life in the first full-length documentary film to celebrate its history, and ensure that it is not erased.
Behind a dull green door on the corner of King’s Road and Bramerton Street in Chelsea, down some rickety steps to the basement lay the dive, a former strip club. The lease had been won in a bet at a televised boxing event at the Dorchester hotel by course bookie Ted Ware in 1943, and initially he offered it as a hang-out to a group of his lesbian pals who had been kicked out of their old Soho haunt the Bag O’ Nails pub after new owners took over and banned them.
Continue reading...Sister-in-law hid one dedicated to Gauguin because of ‘anger at the French artist’s attacks on his former friend’
Shortly before Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear and had a breakdown after quarrelling with his fellow artist, Paul Gauguin, in the French city of Arles in 1888, he created a pair of extraordinary paintings. One, Gauguin’s Chair, depicts a couple of books and a lit candle discarded on an ornate armchair. The other, Van Gogh’s Chair, shows a tobacco pipe and pouch on a rustic wooden chair and is instantly recognisable as one of the most famous paintings in the world.
Now, the mystery of how the diptych of paintings came to be split up – and why the picture of Gauguin’s chair was kept in the family collection while Van Gogh’s Chair was sold off – has finally been solved.
Continue reading...Comments come after Ukrainian criticism of organiser EBU’s decision to move contest to UK
Boris Johnson has said Ukraine deserves to host next year’s Eurovision song contest and that he hopes it will be able to do so despite the ongoing war with Russia.
The BBC is in talks with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) about hosting the event in the UK, which came second in the 2022 contest, after the body ruled it could not go ahead in Ukraine as planned.
Continue reading...Etruscan, Greek and Roman artefacts that are being returned have gone on display in Rome
A museum to showcase dozens of relics that were stolen from cultural sites in Italy and trafficked to the US has opened in Rome.
About 100 of the 260 Etruscan, Greek and Roman artefacts that are gradually being returned to Italy have gone on display as part of the first exhibit in the Museum of Rescued Art, which is being hosted in a space among the ruins of the ancient Baths of Diocletian.
Continue reading...Netflix film, which has been called ‘startling’ by source author Joyce Carol Oates, stars Ana de Armas as the tragic actor
The first trailer has launched for Blonde, Netflix’s controversial biopic of Marilyn Monroe.
Directed by Andrew Dominik, best known for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the film stars Ana de Armas as the tragic star and is based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize.
Continue reading...The Oscar-winning comedian and actor accused the streamer of racial and sexual discrimination over a proposed comedy special
Mo’Nique and Netflix reportedly have settled her lawsuit that accused the streaming service of racial and sexual discrimination for allegedly making her a lowball offer for a proposed comedy special.
The matter has been “amicably resolved”, Michael Parks, an attorney representing Mo’Nique in the suit, told the Hollywood Reporter.
Continue reading...Grammy-award winning US rapper will no longer headline Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge
Lil Wayne will no longer headline at Strawberries & Creem festival in Cambridge after he was banned from entering the UK at the last minute, event organisers have said.
The Grammy-award winning American rapper, 39, will not perform on Saturday in what was believed to be his first UK show in 14 years after he had his visa application refused.
Continue reading...Open letter to festival board says Santos’ involvement threatens cultural integrity and amounts to ‘artswashing’
A delegation of First Nations people are expected to join a collective of artists and creative producers on Thursday to protest a controversial sponsorship deal between the Darwin festival and gas and oil company Santos.
The call to dump the longstanding fossil fuel sponsorship was included in an open letter sent on Tuesday to the festival’s board, chaired by former Northern Territory Airports chief executive Ian Kew, along with a petition of about 200 signatures. The protest coincides with the launch the festival’s 2022 program, running from 4 to 21 August.
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Continue reading...Pencil cases, skirts and hats among items targeted for ‘contradicting Islamic faith and public morals’
Saudi officials have been seizing rainbow-coloured toys and clothing from shops in the capital as part of a crackdown on homosexuality, state media has reported.
The kingdom opened to tourism in 2019 but, like other Gulf countries, it is frequently criticised for its human rights record, including its outlawing of homosexuality, a potential capital offence.
Continue reading...The actor, who received an honorary Oscar this year, spoke out against the producers’ handling of the in memoriam section, as well as the choice of presenters
Samuel L Jackson has criticised this year’s Oscars ceremony for its handling of the death of pioneering actor Sidney Poitier, as well as their attempts to reach a wider demographic by expanding the pool of presenters.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times, Jackson said he was “still a little ticked that the greatest actor we had in Hollywood died and they gave him, what, 10 fucking seconds. No. It should have been a whole Sidney Poitier section.”
Continue reading...Copy of film on now antiquated format was previously owned by actor Tom Wilson, who played Biff Tannen in movie series
A sealed VHS tape of the hit 1980s movie Back to the Future has sold for $75,000 in the first ever auction of the now antiquated video-playing format.
The auction, held by Texas-based Heritage Auctions, featured 260 sealed VHS tapes, most of which were first-edition copies of movies from the 70s and 1980s. The Hill reported that the price tag meant the tape was probably the most expensive ever sold.
Continue reading...Australian author denies he is a plagiarist and says he has been ‘influenced by the greats’ of literature
The Australian novelist John Hughes, who last week admitted to “unintentionally” plagiarising parts of a Nobel laureate’s novel, appears to have also copied without acknowledgment parts of The Great Gatsby, Anna Karenina and other classic texts in his new book The Dogs.
The revelation of new similarities follows an investigation by Guardian Australia which resulted in Hughes’ 2021 novel being withdrawn from the longlist of the $60,000 Miles Franklin literary award.
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