Category Archives: Culture

Netflix to pause all projects and acquisitions in Russia

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The streamer has halted work on four original series as a result of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine

Netflix has paused all future Russian projects and acquisitions as a result of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

According to Variety, the streamer is “assessing the impact of current events”, which has led to four Russian original series being indefinitely paused. Zato, a crime series set after the fall of the Soviet Union, directed by the Belarus-born director Darya Zhuk, was already in production but has now been put on hold.

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Patrick Stewart: ‘I’d go straight home and drink until I passed out’

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As he beams aboard another Star Trek adventure, the 81-year-old actor talks about playing Picard as an intergalactic Prospero, hitting the bottle during an exhausting Macbeth – and reaching page 310 of his memoir


Patrick Stewart is slightly surprised to be talking about the impending second series of Star Trek: Picard, during a break from shooting the third in California. The reason is that he so firmly turned down the first season. After playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard, 24th-century hero of Starfleet, in 176 TV episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and four spin-off movies, Stewart was convinced that “I’d done everything I could with Picard and Star Trek”.

But the producers – Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind), Michael Chabon (Wonder Boys), Kirsten Beyer (Star Trek: Discovery), Alex Kurtzman (The Mummy) – persisted. And Stewart “took a look at the names, and there were Academy award and Pulitzer prize winners. So I thought the most courteous thing to do would be to have a meeting to tell them face to face why I was going to turn them down.”

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How did Euphoria become the most loved and hated show on TV?

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The HBO teen drama’s second season is either a glorious mess or an excessive fantasy of high school. Either way, it’s a record-breaking hit

If you were anywhere near social media this past Sunday night, you probably at least glimpsed the divisive mess that was the second season finale of Euphoria, HBO’s technicolor, gleefully excessive soap on the outsized trials and tribulations of suburban California teens. After a buzzy and acclaimed but modestly watched debut in 2019, the show’s second season has blown up: HBO announced Tuesday that Euphoria, with help from its new streaming home on HBO Max, is now its second most watched show since 2004. It averaged 16.3 million viewers an episode this season, behind only OG HBO juggernaut Game of Thrones, which drew an average of 44.2 million viewers during its final season in 2019.

But perhaps more impressive, and telling, than its 2022 viewing stats is Euphoria’s digital footprint. According to Twitter, the drama is the most tweeted-about show of the (still young) decade, with 34m tweets in the US alone. This is by design: Euphoria, adapted by Sam Levinson from the Israeli show of the same name, is audacious in style, almost pugnaciously provocative in substance, with imitable peacocking fashion and easily memeable cutaways. In other words, catnip for the online crowd.

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Eighty-year-old study of British slave trade is back in the bestsellers list

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Capitalism and Slavery, by the future first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago Eric Williams, argues that the abolition of slavery was motivated by economic, not moral, concerns

A book of unpalatable truths about Britain’s slave trade has become a UK bestseller, almost 80 years after author Eric Williams was told by a British publisher: “I would never publish such a book, for it would be contrary to the British tradition.”

Capitalism and Slavery was first published in the US in 1944. It was published in the UK by the independent publisher André Deutsch in 1964, with a number of reprints over the next 20 years.

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A beginner’s guide to Elden Ring: what it is and why you should play it

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It is being hailed as one of the greatest games of all time, but if you don’t yet know your Margit from your Elden, here is a guide to get you roaming the Lands Between like a pro

Elden Ring has a Metacritic rating of 97%. If you type its name into Twitter you will be flooded with praise and anecdotes from players who have already spent many hours immersed in its arcane world. But what exactly is it? Why are people obsessed with it? And should you join them – or is it too hard?

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Can someone explain to Sam Elliott what The Power of the Dog is about – and what movies are?

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Despite more than 100 screen credits of his own, the actor sounded pretty confused about the basics on Marc Maron’s podcast

For approximately a full hour, the latest episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast goes absolutely swimmingly. The episode’s guest, Sam Elliott, rumbles on amiably about all manner of subjects, and he seems to be building a genuine rapport with Maron. And then, almost as a closing afterthought, Maron asks Elliott: “Did you see Power of the Dog?”

And then everything went to hell.

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‘Subtlety is the hardest part’: cult metal band Blood Incantation trade extremes for ambience

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The cosmic-minded Denver band broke out with two albums of frenetic riffs and blast beats. Are they risking it all by embracing their inner Zen?

In Blood Incantation’s lyrics, cosmic conspiracy theories abound, telling tales of ancient civilisations, aliens and hallucinogens. But woe betide anyone who describes the Denver metal band’s interests as sci-fi. “The quantum field and holographic universe, DMT and the psychedelic connection, these things are not fictional!” frontman Paul Riedl insists. Clearly he’s argued this before.

“This band isn’t about exploring a fantasy world,” says drummer Isaac Faulk. “It’s about asking questions about the universe that we live in – and that’s way bigger than any fictional universe.” The aim, they say, is for listeners to ask themselves these questions. “We aim to give space for those moments when you can truly attain Zen,” says Riedl.

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Dior and Saint Laurent: an elevated discussion between past and future

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Christian Dior delves into luxurious wearable tech, while Saint Laurent reinvents art deco with a contemporary twist.

“I’d like to start a conversation between technology and everyday life,” says Maria Grazia Chiuri backstage a few minutes before the start of the Christian Dior Fall-Winter 2022-23 show. Subtle clues on the direction of this collection are floating around her – such as a cover of Donna Haraway’s Chtulucene piece, a driving force in feminism and post-humanism.

“I want to open a feminist outlook on what we envelop our bodies in, and how that has the power to free,” Chiuri says of a collection that she conceived as a discussion between technology, tradition and emancipation, and between past, present and future.

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Russian billionaire on EU sanctions list quits as Royal Academy trustee

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Exclusive: Petr Aven’s donation returned after he was called one of Putin’s closest oligarchs in the list

A Russian billionaire named in EU sanctions “as one of Vladimir Putin’s closest oligarchs” stepped down on Tuesday as a trustee of the Royal Academy, which has also returned a donation he made towards a Francis Bacon exhibition.

The RA – which had had been among UK cultural institutions and bodies facing calls to sever ties with Russian oligarchs after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – said that the billionaire banker Petr Aven would be stepping down with immediate effect.

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Riveting, terrifying, completely singular: how Chrissy Amphlett changed the game

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Growing up the daughter of a rock’n’roller, Lo Carmen was meeting stars at gigs from the age of 13. One left a life-changing impression

  • This is an edited extract from Lovers Dreamers Fighters by Lo Carmen

I was 13 when I became enamoured with Chrissy Amphlett.

It was 1983 and I had just started working for our old family friend Vince Lovegrove in the school holidays. In the late 60s Vince had been a frilly-shirted bubble-gum pop singer with the Valentines, alongside AC/DC’s Bon Scott; in the 70s, he’d transitioned to hip music scene journalist, to TV producer, to compère; and now he was managing cutting-edge rock group the Divinyls, whose song Boys in Town I was already obsessed with.

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Aline review – think twice before you watch this scary Céline Dion biopic

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Valérie Lemercier directs and plays both old and young versions of the Canadian singer in a bizarre film that digitally superimposes her face on to the head of a young girl

Here is an utterly bizarre fictionalised biopic of Canadian singing star Céline Dion, whose opening scenes will have audiences screaming and running out of the cinemas the way they were mythically supposed to have done at the Lumière brothers’ first silent movie about the arriving train. Even now, I still can’t believe I have seen it.

Valérie Lemercier (from Claire Denis’s Vendredi Soir) directs and stars, playing Aline Dieu – a made-up version of Dion – the youngest of 14 children in Quebec, all the kids kept in line by their formidable working-class mum Sylvette (Danielle Fichaud). Young Aline shows precocious singing talent and her parents send a demo tape to ageing record producer Guy-Claude Kamar (Sylvain Marcel), a version of the real-life René Angélil, who is to become her manager, husband and soulmate as Aline begins her ascent to mega-selling glory, culminating in the Titanic theme My Heart Will Go On and legendary Vegas residencies.

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‘One diamond could have bought two airports’ – the Filipino recreating Imelda Marcos’s gems stash

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The mind-boggling hoard of jewellery the plundering first lady tried to smuggle out of the Philippines is being remade as sculpture by artist Pio Abad – with all its sparkle gone

Over his three terms as president of the Philippines from 1965, Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda were able to cream off some $10bn of the nation’s assets through offshore banks. New revelations that a close associate of the dictator was also able to maintain an account with Credit Suisse as late as 2006 therefore comes as no surprise to Manila-born Pio Abad. For a decade the artist has been making work under the title The Collection of Jane Ryan and William Saunders, a reference to the aliases the couple used with the Swiss bank.

“It’s funny when a 10-year project becomes news,” says Abad, who is now London-based. “These institutions are very culpable for what happened in the Philippines.”

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The Scary of Sixty-First review – outrage-baiting Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy chiller

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Friends become possessed by conspiracy theories after moving into Epstein’s old apartment in this smirking love letter to Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut

In 2019, reviewing a re-release of Eyes Wide Shut, Peter Bradshaw pointed out that in the age of Epstein, the idea of a secret society of the rich and powerful exploiting the vulnerable no longer seemed far-fetched. Now comes The Scary of Sixty-First, a kind of cinematic love letter to Stanley Kubrick set in the New York of Eyes Wide Shut, about Jeffrey Epstein and the conspiracy theories around his death. It’s a shallow, outrage-baiting movie out to shock but not much else. Disappointingly, the director and co-writer is supersmart switched-on Dasha Nekrasova, an actor who plays Kendall’s press adviser Comfrey in Succession and co-hosts the Red Scare podcast.

The movie begins like an episode of Girls: friends Noelle (co-writer Madeline Quinn) and Addie (Betsey Brown) move into a suspiciously cheap rented apartment in Manhattan’s swanky Upper East Side. Eli Keszler’s pounding synth-y score signals something is up; so too does the creepy second bedroom, which has a mirror on the ceiling and doors that lock from the outside. Then comes a knock at the door. A woman credited only as The Girl (played by Nekrasova, possessing Chloë Sevigny levels of aloof cool), tells them that the apartment was previously owned by Epstein.

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‘A brutalist hanging gardens of Babylon’ – the maddening, miraculous Barbican hits 40

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Conceived as a utopian city within a city, the labyrinthine London landmark had a troubled path on its way to being hailed as an architectural icon. But is this world-class arts centre now in danger of being turned into a shopping mall?

It looks like something from a wildly imaginative sci-fi comic, an impossible vision of worlds slamming into each other in a fantastical collage. Elevated walkways leap across the sky while a trio of towers rise up like serrated blades, their edges sawing at the clouds. Beneath them, fountains cascade and cafes spill across lush waterside terraces, while an art gallery and library jut out overhead. A tropical conservatory wraps around the top of a subterranean theatre, next to a cinema buried beneath a crescent of apartments. And the entire multilayered edifice floats above a 2,000-seat concert hall carved into the ground.

This is no sci-fi comic, but a cutaway diagram of the Barbican arts centre dating from 1982, rendered in vivid orange, red and green. Somehow, this miraculous Escher-like wonder really did get built, and it hits 40 this month, with celebratory events and a handsome new book modestly titled Building Utopia.

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The show can’t go on: Russian arts cancelled worldwide

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Concerts, dance recitals and exhibitions have been postponed indefinitely after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has prompted responses from the cultural sphere, with Russian artists and companies beginning to feel the repercussions of decisions taken by the Kremlin. Not only has Russia been stripped of two prestigious events – the Champions League men’s final and Formula One’s Russian Grand Prix –but an increasing number of performances by Russians are being cancelled worldwide.

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The Batman review – Robert Pattinson’s emo hero elevates gloomy reboot

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Matt Reeves’ film is spectacular and well-cast but an intriguing saga of corruption devolves into a tiresome third act

That definite article means it’s the genuine article. Adding “the” to Batman’s name has become a huge part of the brand identity, a sign of how elemental and atavistic this shadowy figure is supposed to be. You can imagine some growly voice saying “the Batman” – but not Tom Holland putting on a deep baritone to say he’s “the Spider-Man”, or Henry Cavill booming he’s “the Superman” (although maybe you could have Billy Joel stride into a dark Gotham City bar to raspingly confront “the Piano Man”).

Director and co-writer Matt Reeves has created a new Batman iteration in which Robert Pattinson reinvents billionaire Bruce Wayne as an elegantly wasted rock star recluse, willowy and dandyish in his black suit with tendrils of dark hair falling over his face; but Wayne magically trebles in bulk when he reappears in costume and mask as the Dark Knight, his whole being weaponised into a slab-like impassivity. And this of course is happening in the sepulchral vastness of Gotham City, the brutal and murky world which Christopher Nolan thrillingly pioneered with his Dark Knight trilogy and made indispensable for imagining Batman on screen.

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Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – stunning TV that is suddenly unmissable

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Filmmaker James Jones had no idea when he started it two years ago that a terrible synchronicity would make his blistering documentary about the nuclear accident in northern Ukraine a must-watch

Had it been released at any point in the past few years, Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes would have been an important documentary; a feature-length blend of audio interviews and largely unseen archive footage that puts the 1986 disaster into horrifying new perspective. That it comes out now – just days after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, including an attack on the Chernobyl site itself – makes it as unmissable as it is harrowing.

Obviously, this timeliness was never the intention. Indeed, the film-maker James Jones had a different historical event in mind when he started work on it two years ago. “I initially thought the relevance was Covid,” he says. Like Chernobyl, the early days of the pandemic were marked with mysterious illnesses that the local government attempted to keep a lid on. “I was interested in the idea that this invisible enemy was threatening us,” he says. “An authoritarian regime was lying about it, and Chinese citizens were starting to voice their disquiet publicly.”

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Worldle, Sweardle, Byrdle? A guide to the maze of word game apps that aren’t Wordle

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Whether you are frustrated by the smash hit puzzle, or hungry for more, there are endless alternatives out there - but which are the best?

The debate continues to rage among Wordle players: has the New York Times ruined it? Why are there suddenly so many double-letter days (SWILL, seriously?); so many frustrating solutions that hinge on a single, ambiguous letter? And what about “caulk”? Has something changed? Or are people just losing interest? Since Wordle caught the world’s attention, there has been a fast-flowing stream of copycats and humorous takes on the word-guessing game, based on everything from swearing (Sweardle) to choral music (Byrdle) to geography (Worldle). If you’re looking for something different, though, rather than just an inventive twist on the same theme, the Android and Apple app stores have many other word games you can play on your phone. Fans have been quietly enjoying some of these for years – some offer a daily five or 10 minutes of puzzle fun, while others let you sink as much time into them as you want.

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The big idea: is it time to stop talking about ‘nature versus nurture’?

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The latest science shows that genes and environment are ​too deeply entwined to pit them against one another

When you hear people conversing in an unfamiliar language, why is it that you can’t even tell where one word ends and the next begins? If you are a native English speaker, why is it so challenging to get your mouth around a French or Hebrew “r”, which originates lower in the throat, or the “r” in Spanish or Italian, which is trilled on the tip of the tongue? Your ability to hear and make sounds, and to understand their meaning as language, is wired into your brain. How you acquire that wiring illuminates an age-old debate about human nature.

In the first few months of your life, your infant brain is bathed in all kinds of information from the world around you, through your senses. This sense data causes changes in your brain as your neurons fire in various patterns. Some collections of neurons fire together frequently, strengthening or tuning their connections and aiding learning. Others are used less and are pruned away, making room for more useful ones to form. This process of tuning and pruning is called plasticity, and it happens throughout your life, but enormously in the first few years.

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