Category Archives: Culture

Gugu Mbatha-Raw: ‘It’s a misconception that people act to get attention’

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Shaped by her father’s early life in apartheid South Africa, the actor brings political awareness to all of her roles, from Black Mirror and The Morning Show to the new BBC thriller The Girl Before

As those of us who have spent more time than usual at home over the last couple of years will know, those four walls can be a sanctuary, prison or, at times, both. Beautiful, monolithic and eerily empty, the house in the new BBC/HBO drama The Girl Before is definitely both. “The house,” says Gugu Mbatha-Raw with a laugh, “is the real star.” At one point in the first episode, Mbatha-Raw’s character Jane appears to have developed an intense relationship with it, caressing its smooth stone and glass.

In The Girl Before, adapted from the bestselling psychological thriller by JP Delaney, Jane passes a rigorous vetting process before being allowed to rent this minimalist dream home. In return for cheap rent, she has to agree to around 200 strange and stringent rules set by the architect and owner. “No books?” she says, incredulous, when the estate agent reels off some of the stipulations (no pictures, no ornaments, “no children, obviously”). Jane will be watched, her every move and metric monitored, even her moods influenced, by the technologically advanced house and its creepy creator. She soon finds out that she is the second tenant – and she makes a chilling discovery about the first, Emma (played by Jessica Plummer).

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‘I wanted the focus to be on their smiles’: Brunel Johnson’s best phone picture

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The London-born photographer on his image of Gambian football fans

There’s a strong Premier League following in the Gambia: just like Brunel Johnson, 14-year-old Musa is an Arsenal fan. The London-born photographer was on his way to lunch when he noticed the teen, in his favourite football shirt, huddled with friends. They were on the grounds of Spot Academy, watching game highlights on one of the older kids’ phones.

Brunel had been living alongside the boys for two weeks, documenting the work of the charity, which serves as a community school while providing boarding places for orphans. He’d left his digital camera in his room and knew the moment would pass if he went back for it. So he reached for his iPhone. The photograph’s angle was a spur-of-the-moment decision, chosen simply to fit as many faces in as possible; he added the black and white “Noir” filter later.

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Shane MacGowan: ‘Describe myself in three words? I’m bloody great’

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The Pogues frontman on vanity, a horrible heckle and why he became a vegetarian

Born in Kent, MacGowan, 63, won a scholarship to Westminster school, but was later expelled. In 1982, he became frontman of the Pogues; the band’s albums include Rum Sodomy and the Lash and If I Should Fall from Grace with God. MacGowan co-wrote the song Fairytale of New York, which he performed with Kirsty MacColl; released in 1987, it remains a festive classic. He has launched his own line of merchandise on his website. He lives in Dublin with his wife, the writer Victoria Mary Clarke.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Myself – why not?

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Ricky Gervais on offence, anger and infuriating Hollywood: ‘You have to provoke. It’s a good thing’

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He has made a career out of winding people up in everything from The Office to his Golden Globes speeches – but is the comedian’s bark worse than his bite?

Ricky Gervais’s assistant leads me past a huge, empty room to the top floor of an office above a shop on a swanky London high street. Gervais is sitting behind a desk at his computer in another huge, empty room, and looks as if he’s just squatted the place. There is nothing that suggests this is his office, except for the branded mugs sitting on his desk; one shows his face, the second says Tambury Gazette, the fictional newspaper where Gervais’s character, Tony, works in his hit Netflix series After Life.

As soon as he sees me, he swings his legs off the floor and on to the desk. I expect him to say, “Right, shoot”, as his fabulous fictional creation David Brent might have done, but he reins himself in. It’s 20 years since Gervais made his name with The Office, and it’s often been difficult to know where Brent ends and Gervais begins.

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Duchess of Argyll sex scandal retold in new BBC drama series

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Admirers of vilified aristocrat say they hope series will allow her to be ‘seen in a different light’

It took the judge more than three hours to read out his damning judgment at the end of one of the longest, most expensive and toxic divorce cases of the 20th century.

Margaret, the Duchess of Argyll, was, he declared with contempt, “a highly sexed woman” who was not “satisfied with normal relations and had started to indulge in disgusting sexual activities to gratify a debased sexual appetite”.

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Images of India: from courtesans and colonial rule to a child’s-eye view – in pictures

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Since its invention in the 1840s, photography has played an integral part in Indian art history. Although it is often said that India is the most photographed country in the world, the history of its representation is more complicated, and more political, than initially meets the eye. Visions of India: From the Colonial to the Contemporary is the first major survey of Indian photography in Australia and will be on show at the Monash Gallery of Art in Melbourne until 20 March 2022

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Eric Clapton wins legal case against woman selling bootleg live CD for £8.45

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Rock star wins case against German woman who says her late husband bought the disc at a popular department store in the 80s

Eric Clapton has won a legal case against a 55-year-old German woman selling a bootleg live CD for €9.95 (£8.45), Deutsche Welle reports.

The woman, known as Gabriele P, claimed she was unaware that she was committing copyright infringement by listing the CD titled Eric Clapton – Live USA, which contains recordings of performances from the 1980s, on eBay. She told the court that the listing was removed after one day.

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bell hooks’ writing told Black women and girls to trust themselves | Deborah Douglas

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The feminist writer created a vocabulary that helped us to learn, grow, and forgive – and above all to understand

Having just the right words to explain what’s happening keeps you from feeling, well, crazy.

When the world learned of the passing of bell hooks, the renowned feminist, public intellectual, author, and professor on Wednesday, at her home in Berea, Kentucky, it was the value and accessibility of her words that resonated with Black women, whose understanding of themselves and their own work was transformed by hooks.

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Javier Bardem: ‘When I won the Oscar, I felt great, but it didn’t make any sense’

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Famed for portraying bad guys in Skyfall and No Country for Old Men, the Spaniard opens up about his marriage to Penélope Cruz, his formidable mum, and his hopes for his kids

The bad news is that, at the last minute, my interview with Javier Bardem is changed from being a face-to-face encounter to one conducted by the less risky means of video chat (damn you, Omicron!) But the good news is this means I get to snoop around Bardem’s home in Madrid, where he Zooms me from, and which he shares with his wife, the actor Penélope Cruz, and their two children, Leonardo, 10, and Luna, eight. OK, I don’t actually see the whole house, but he does give me a panoramic view of his study while his kids shout and play outside.

“You can see my little bookcase here,” Bardem says, picking up his laptop and giving me the grand tour. “And my map of the world. It’s very chaotic.”

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Culture in a bowl: Haiti’s joumou soup awarded protected status by Unesco

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The dish, originally cooked by slaves for their owners, has come to symbolise hope and dignity in the troubled Caribbean country

Haiti’s joumou soup, a symbol of hope and dignity for the world’s first black-led republic, has been awarded protected status by Unesco.

The soup, made from turban squash and originally cooked by enslaved African people for their owners in Haiti, was on Thursday added to Unesco’s prestigious list of intangible cultural heritage. It is Haiti’s first inclusion on the list, and the country’s Unesco ambassador, Dominique Dupuy, cried as the announcement was made. The decision is expected to be officially endorsed by Unesco’s general assembly next year.

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Go easy on me: why pop has got so predictable

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Adele, Ed Sheeran, Abba, Lana Del Rey and Drake all found success in 2021 by delivering more of the same – a result of how our chaotic lives, on and offline, are informing our taste

The biggest album launch of 2021 began with a social media statement tacitly assuring fans that nothing had changed. Adele was once more in a state of heartbreak – “a maze of absolute mess and inner turmoil … consumed by my own grief” – and that the contents of her album 30 would reflect that, as mired in romantic misery as its predecessors, 25 and 21. It was the musical equivalent, she said, of a friend who comes over “with a bottle of wine and a takeaway” to discuss the disastrous state of your love life.

The second-biggest album launch of 2021 was preceded by its creators proudly announcing they had written it “absolutely trend-blind”. Abba had traversed a considerable musical distance over the course of their original career, buffeted by the shifting musical trends of the 70s and early 80s – from the clompy Europop of their debut album to the sophisticated, chilly electronics of The Visitors, by way of glam and sleek disco – but Voyage would offer them preserved in amber, exactly as they were in the late 70s, unspoiled by any musical trends from the 40 years since their split.

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Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler on saving Christmas: ‘We don’t usually meet people who hate our books’

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The Gruffalo creators are back with Superworm, their ninth festive special – that’s one more than Eric and Ernie. The Christmas TV royalty talk tinkering with Olivia Colman’s script … and the perils of mega success

Meeting Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is a little like meeting the royal family. To learn anything about them is to be bombarded with an avalanche of statistics. In this country alone, a Julia Donaldson book sells every 11 seconds. In 2014 it was reported that 40p in every pound spent on children’s picture books went on a Donaldson title. And her work with Scheffler has taken on a rabid life outside of literature, too. Go to the woods and you’re likely to discover a Gruffalo trail. Chessington World of Adventures theme park is essentially a Donaldson/Scheffler temple, brimming with themed rides and marauding characters.

And, let’s not forget, they are also the reigning king and queen of Christmas Day. Starting with The Gruffalo in 2009, one of their books has been sumptuously animated and proudly placed in every BBC One Christmas schedule. This year, Superworm – about an earthworm superhero captured by a wizard lizard – has received the treatment, narrated by none other than Olivia Colman and with Matt Smith as the titular creepy crawly. In grand Donaldson/Scheffler tradition the animation is bright and tactile, and the storyline has been augmented with a rich seam of festive melancholy. On a Christmas day dripping with repeats, this will not only go down as the BBC’s stand-out offering, but is also their ninth Christmas special. If you’re counting, Morecambe and Wise only managed eight.

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bell hooks remembered: ‘She embodied everything I wanted to be’

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The activist and acclaimed author of Ain’t I a Woman and All About Love has died. Here, leading contemporaries pay tribute to her

• A life in quotes: bell hooks

• bell hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69

British journalist and author of the bestselling Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

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‘You immediately tell your friends to cancel their tickets’ – what’s it like to star in a flop?

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How does it feel to go back on stage night after night in a play that’s been mauled by critics and deserted by audiences? Richard Eyre and other directors and actors relive their trauma

Movies, TV shows and books can all get terrible reviews and small audiences, but the difference when this happens in theatre is that the actors have to go back on stage and remake the work just after critics have declared it disastrous. “It is so crushing for actors to have to go on night after night bearing the weight of failure,” says Richard Eyre, artistic director of the Royal National Theatre from 1987 to 1997. “And that’s one of the reasons actors are such stoics. For directors and writers, there’s a sense of disembowelment you carry round if you’ve had a major failure – but they can just fuck off to Tenerife, and some do. Actors are obliged to soak it up.”

Actor Michael Simkins, who wrote the theatrical memoir What’s My Motivation?, says: “If I had to articulate what it feels like to be in the middle of a play you feel is dying on its arse, it’s a cold sense of dread, like battery acid in your stomach. After terrible reviews, a sort of numbness sets in that is still there for the second night. You haven’t yet fully processed it. The first thing you do is tell all your friends who have booked tickets to cancel.”

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bell hooks, author and activist, dies aged 69

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In acclaimed works Ain’t I a Woman and All About Love the writer shared her ideas about race, feminism and romance with flair and compassion

Gloria Jean Watkins, better known by her pen name bell hooks, has died aged 69.

Her niece Ebony Motley tweeted: “The family of @bellhooks is sad to announce the passing of our sister, aunt, great aunt and great great aunt.”

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Sotheby’s sells record $7.3bn of art so far in 2021

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Auction house credits younger, tech-savvy collectors for highest annual sales in its 277-year history

Sotheby’s has sold a record $7.3bn (£5.5bn) worth of art and other collectibles so far this year – the most in its 277-year history.

The auction house said on Wednesday that an “influx of younger, tech-savvy collectors” buying luxury items such as handbags, jewellery, wine and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) during the pandemic had helped lift sales to the record high.

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A Fight Against … review – Chilean playwright’s sparky sketches

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Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London
Pablo Manzi’s political scenes, which span several decades and are powerfully performed, could perhaps lead to a future epic

Thirty years ago, the Royal Court introduced a Chilean playwright, Ariel Dorfman, with Death and the Maiden, a much-revived, twistily structured thriller about South American human rights abuses.

While theatre can have a one-hit-and-run attitude to distant politics, the Court has commendably kept an eye on Santiago. Its international programme mentors new writers in an initiative spawning several Court stagings, including Guillermo Calderón’s B in 2017 and now, in sparky English by the same translator, William Gregory, Una Lucha Contra … by Pablo Manzi.

A Fight Against … (Una Lucha Contra … ) is at the Royal Court theatre, London, until 22 January

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Shatner in Space: Captain Kirk’s in a willy-shaped spaceship – and it’s poetry in motion

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This documentary is indescribably touching as it captures the Star Trek actor’s rocket voyage. Even if it is a Jeff Bezos ego trip

There are two competing schools of thought when it comes to William Shatner’s space mission. The first is characterised by a kind of awestruck wonder over the beautiful symmetry of it all: Shatner starred in Star Trek, Star Trek inspired a generation of engineers, the engineers built a rocket, the rocket flew Shatner into space. The second tends to think that letting a billionaire indulge an actor by flying him to the brink of the atmosphere in a spaceship shaped like a willy might not be the best use of our resources.

Shatner in Space is firmly for the first crowd. A 45-minute documentary about his mission, it airs on Amazon Prime. Jeff Bezos owns Amazon Prime. He also owns the rocket that Shatner flew on. Anyone expecting even an iota of criticism would be better off looking elsewhere.

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Analogue Pocket review – a heaven-sent gift for Game Boy fans

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This high-end reproduction console makes original Game Boy titles (and more) look and play better than ever

For the past 10 years Seattle-based tech company Analogue has been making high-end retro video game hardware, with a steely focus on accurate, authentic reproduction rather than emulation. Its Mega Sg and Super Nt consoles were highly acclaimed modernisations of the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo, allowing users to play all their old 16-bit game carts on modern machines with a variety of display and audio options. Now the company has finally launched its Analogue Pocket, a handheld console that will play Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (GBA) cartridges on a beautiful 3.5in LCD display in crisp 1600×1440 resolution.

As with the other consoles in its range, there’s no software emulation of the old systems going on here. The company uses a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) circuit to replicate the original tech specs, which means it can pretty much run any Game Boy game from the thousands available, with few of the glitches, instabilities or compatibility problems often associated with software-based emulators.

The gaming equivalent of buying a fancy new turntable to play your old records

The Analogue Pocket is available for pre-order now; $219.99

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‘We were pinned as the bitches’: the OC and 90210 stars reclaiming their voices

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Hit noughties US teen shows – and UK ones like Skins – were irresistible to their wide-eyed, hormone-fuelled viewers. Now their casts are reuniting in podcasts to discuss the good – and the bad – of adolescent stardom

There is nothing new about a nostalgic TV reunion. In the last year we’ve seen televisual specials reunite actors from Friends, New Girl and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air for emotional chats and table reads of episodes past. There are cast-led rewatch podcasts like Fake Doctors, Real Friends – hosted by the Scrubs stars Zach Braff and Donald Faison – or West Wing Weekly and Office Ladies (about the US Office). But, often, they are bathed in a cosy glow. They fail to lift the lid on the shows’ darker side. They avoid raising problematic issues that call into question the ethics of the industry they work in.

This is not true when it comes to the wave of podcasts that have brought together the casts of 00s teen shows. Years spent portraying the breakups, makeups, hedonistic parties and burgeoning sex lives of teenagers – in hits such as The OC and 90210 – have made way for audio series in which their casts discuss the good and the bad of adolescent stardom.

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