With the 40th anniversary of Jones’s masterful fifth album Nightclubbing approaching, we rank her best work
Jones’s debut single was joyous, cantering mid-70s Eurodisco, its lyrics clearly written with one eye on the dancefloors of gay clubs. It was rerecorded for Jones’s 1977 debut album, Portfolio, with an arrangement by the Salsoul Orchestra’s Vince Montana and a stronger vocal, but the original drips with slightly shonky period charm.
Continue reading...From Lizzo to Lana Del Rey, celebrities have taken umbrage with reviews online. But arguing with journalists only warps the public’s view of the media, and puts writers under siege
In 2018, while working as a freelance writer, I travelled three hours outside of London on a train, and then a coach, to review a music festival. I camped in the cold and the rain, waking up at 8am each morning to make sure I didn’t miss anything. When I got home, I filed what I thought was a generous review. I did not expect the organiser and the founder of the festival to find me on Twitter to tell me that I clearly hadn’t attended, or that my three-star review was full of lies. They were hurt that I hadn’t given it five stars. I was hurt that my hard work – complete with blood blisters, swollen glands and glitter that took two weeks to wash out of my hair – was now seen as a declaration of war.
As an editor and sometime critic specialising in pop culture, differing perceptions are par for the course. I find it skull-crushingly boring to see the same TV show or album receive near-identical reviews across the board, or read identikit reviews of the same film. I inhale people’s opinions – the good and the bad, the funny and the touching, the flippant and the problematic – and exhale them. I don’t internalise them. I don’t agree with a lot of what I read, but I take something from it: someone else’s views. I go to certain people because I know, nine times out of 10, we think very, very differently (here’s looking at you, Camilla Long). Reviews can serve as a guide but they are also an artform in their own right. They entertain, inform and challenge readers. The writer AO Scott described criticism in his 2016 book Better Living Through Criticism as “art’s late-born twin”.
Continue reading...Three Dublin lads and their super-smart classmate face an uncertain future in a tale that only hints at dark possibilities
Here is an ensemble coming-of-ager in which someone actually says the line: “That summer may have changed everything …” It’s in a style I associate with the 90s: movies such as Trainspotting or Human Traffic, with people clubbing and yearning and discovering the value of friendship together as the sun comes up. There’s certainly an impressive cast lineup for this one, but there’s also something weirdly formless and frustrating about it as well; the film gestures at some dark and disturbing possibilities in human nature without quite knowing if or how to follow through.
Matthew (Dean-Charles Chapman), Kearney (Finn Cole) and Rez (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) are three Dublin lads who leave school without much idea of what they want to do – not like their super-smart classmate Jen (Anya Taylor-Joy) who has some ambitious life plans figured out and on whom sweet, sensitive Matthew has a massive crush. But then the boys witness something horrible that shakes them up and reveals a sinister side to Kearney, who has a creepy attitude to Jen and a droog-like enthusiasm for torturing homeless people.
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Trekking through forests and meadows in search of quirky creatures to photograph is a serene but repetitive experience
Pokémon is nominally about collecting and battling cute monsters, but, like most children’s fiction that has stood the test of time, these games draw you into an interesting and believable place – one where kids can live their dreams and humans exist in harmony with quirky creatures. It’s a universe that has captivated a few generations, and for adults who grew up with it, their fondness runs deep. Even on a tiny, black-and-white Game Boy screen, what Pokémon has always offered is a world.
New Pokémon Snap has you looking at that world through a camera lens, as you glide serenely through different fictional habitats in a cheerful yellow observation pod. The Pokémon go about their business – a Machamp poses on the beach, Sawsbuck struts gorgeously around a forest, Combees doodle about in a meadow of flowers – and you line up the perfect shot. You need to be quick with the shutter to catch fast-moving airborne creatures, and patient to capture a dawdling Charmander in the perfect pose.
Continue reading...With daring shows such as I May Destroy You and I Hate Suzie, there’s much to celebrate. But ITV will rightly feel aggrieved as Quiz and Des miss out
The good news is that the 2021 British Academy television awards recognise – as these trophies have not always done – glittering fresh genius where it appears.
Two daringly written and visualised dramas with first-person titles that include an aggressive verb – the BBC’s I May Destroy You and Sky Atlantic’s I Hate Suzie – receive eight and five nominations respectively. Each is driven by an exceptional creative talent in, respectively, Michaela Coel and Billie Piper. Both series explore the psychology and experience of younger women in a graphic and tragi-comic detail going beyond even Fleabag, a pioneer in that direction.
Continue reading...The critics’ aggregator site has recently added a demurring 1941 write-up that wishes the Orson Welles film ‘let a little sunshine in’
An 80-year-old pseudonymous review appears to have wrecked Citizen Kane’s 100% rating on reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
A Twitter user pointed out the change in Citizen Kane’s rating, due to the addition of a negative review from 1941. It is not clear exactly when the change happened, but website Boing Boing suggested it must have been between 25 February and 15 April, after comparing archived screenshots.
Continue reading...For many people, reading has been difficult this last year - but a breakthrough is always possible. Guardian readers describe the books that drew them in
‘Reading about the hope in others’ hopeless lives kept me going’
Bukowski’s often seedy stories are a wonderful break from normality. I don’t know how I’d have got through lockdown without them. Being sheltered this past year for medical reasons was one of the loneliest times of my life. I don’t have a family nearby; I’m gay and on my own. My friends were the baristas, pub landlords and restaurant owners of my area. Most of them are gone. There were times when I didn’t think I would make it, but then I’d read a story by Bukowski about the hope in the hopeless lives of other people, and it kept me going. Gary Comenas, 65, writer, London
Singer rarely takes part in hearings but has asked to speak directly to court, lawyer says
Britney Spears will personally address the Los Angeles court dealing with her long-running conservatorship in June, a judge agreed on Tuesday.
Spears, 39, has been under a conservatorship since 2008 but rarely takes part in hearings. Her lawyer said on Tuesday that she had asked to speak to the court directly, but he did not say what matters she wished to raise.
Continue reading...After a year of delays, the next 12 months offers a wealth of big, awards-aiming movies from intimate dramas to historical epics
It’s not often that the word unusual gets attached to the Oscars, one of the most staid and predictable nights of the year, as sober as the Golden Globes is drunk. But after an unusual year, the awards season followed suit, extended by two months, films dropping in and out of the race and some that might otherwise have been ignored instead taking centre stage.
Related: And this year’s Oscar for inclusivity goes to … the Academy!
Continue reading...These fiendishly clever mystery novels have spawned pop culture icons, anime and a museum. And, best of all, honkaku plays fair – you have the clues to solve the crime
After a day of joyous wedding celebrations, a bloodcurdling scream echoes into the night. The newlywed bride and groom are found dead in their bed, stabbed with a katana sword, now thrust into the snow outside. Their bedroom was locked from the inside, and there is no way the murderer could have broken in to do the deed, let alone escaped without leaving a trace. How was this impossible crime committed?
Continue reading...First-time director Fernanda Valadez conjures up a vision of real evil in her story of the terrors faced by migrants into the US
There is unbearable heartbreak in this migrant drama from first-time Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez – and also a vision of real evil. At times, it looks something like social-realist folk horror. Mercedes Hernández plays Magdalena, a middle-aged woman from Guanajuato in central Mexico whose teenage son Jesús left home three years before, with a friend, on a bus bound for the border, where he’d hoped to take his chances on disappearing into the US as an illegal. But the body of Jesús’s friend has been found on Mexican territory, in an unspeakably grim holding area where the corpses of teen runaways are routinely kept in container boxes awaiting identification – though there is still no proof that Jesús himself is dead.
Continue reading...Vladislav Ivanov says he regretted his decision to join Produce Camp 2021 but fans refused to vote him out
The reality TV ordeal of a Russian who joined a Chinese boy band show by accident – and made it to the final despite urging fans to vote him off – has finally ended after nearly three months.
Vladislav Ivanov, a 27-year-old from Vladivostok, was kicked out of the Produce Camp 2021 on Saturday after viewers ignored his pleas to leave and backed him all the way to the final.
Continue reading...Against a backdrop of Covid, a striking number of musicians, from hard rock to jazz, made music rich with positivity. In the first of a two-part series, they tell their stories
I had really given up on music after my mom passed away [in 2014], and then of course the record that I saw as my death rattle [2017’s Soft Sounds from Another Planet] got picked up in a big way. It was a very bittersweet moment where all these great things were happening in the wake of loss. I didn’t allow myself to feel that for a long time. Now I feel ready to embrace feeling.
Continue reading...From Bling Empire to Made in Chelsea, the uberwealthy trend in TV is here to stay – and it might even be good for diversity
In the first episode of reality TV show Bling Empire, heiress Anna Shay commits to an excursion so globe-straddlingly audacious it would make Greta Thunberg weep. Los Angeles resident Anna asks a friend and her objectively awful boyfriend to go to her favourite restaurant with her – in Paris. They chart a private plane, eat their dinner and head back to LA the next day. It sets the scene for a series that luxuriates in the lives of the super-rich, and the candour, conflict and rule-breaking that such an existence affords.
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Continue reading...From abandoned car plants to poisoned and dried-out lakes, Travis Fox’s bird’s eye views of the US capture the nation’s terrifying pace of change
Continue reading...A father uses his obsession with the movies to help his daughter when she is unjustly suspected of murder
It turns out that cinephilia is a productive use of time after all. When his computer is searched, Li Weijie, protagonist of this perky Chinese thriller, has watched 838 films in a year – and he uses his superior knowledge of the seventh art to get his family out of a pickle. Chinese but living in northern Thailand, he scrapes by as an internet technician, but his daughter finds herself at the centre of a murder investigation after she accidentally kills the son of a police chief who was trying to blackmail her with smartphone-filmed rape footage.
A remake of the 2013 Malayalam film Drishyam, this big Chinese hit ultimately doffs the cap to Korean cinema: it is Jeong Keun-seob’s 2013 film Montage that inspires Li when he has to provide his family with an alibi.
Continue reading...Dozens of high-profile actors feature on website making fun of Germany’s coronavirus restrictions
For half a century, the police procedural Tatort (“Crime Scene”) has provided a rallying point for Germany’s culturally diverse regions, gathering viewers around their television sets every Sunday night to watch detectives from across the country solve gruesome murders over the course of 90 minutes.
But 13 months into living with a virus that can’t be put behind bars, Tatort has become the scene of a different kind of crime: a series of satirical videos making fun of coronavirus restrictions, recorded by TV actors associated with the crime drama, has plunged lockdown-fatigued Germany into a bitter culture war.
Continue reading...Overblown musical pomposity to some, the guitar solo is seen as a benchmark of brilliance to many. But which is best?
In the Guide’s weekly Solved! column, we look into a crucial pop-culture question you’ve been burning to know the answer to – and settle it
“My solos are my trademark,” announced Nigel Tufnel in 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap. Cue footage of the topless musician performing some signature fret-fondling while curling his lip in satisfaction, then swapping his plectrum for a violin. Before long, the real-life rock stars satirised by Spinal Tap were handed a second blow – when the irreverent grunge scene of the 1990s arrived, ripping up the guitar histrionics rule book, and instead favouring scuzzier playing. Yet, while not as revered as it once was, the guitar solo remains the benchmark of musical brilliance for many.
Continue reading...Filled with product placement and advertising, the band’s newly reissued 1967 album put the pop in pop art, by showing how closely music was entwined with capital
These days, we think of the period between 1965 and 1967 as one of white-hot musical progress, a dizzying three-year period during which innovation followed innovation, a succession of totemic albums and singles were released and pop music changed irrevocably. But, as Jon Savage’s superb book 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded made clear, not everyone at the time was impressed with how things were going. Savage’s research revealed a succession of contemporary naysayers, devoted to “ringing the death knell” as he put it: 1966 – The Year Pop Went Flat was noted music journalist Maureen Cleave’s assessment of 12 months that had seen the release of Revolver, Blonde on Blonde, Reach Out (I’ll Be There), Eight Miles High, It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World and 19th Nervous Breakdown.
The most striking contemporary quote of all might be one that didn’t appear in Savage’s book. “People aren’t jiving in the listening boxes in record shops any more, like we did to a Cliff Richard ‘newie’,” it lamented, before qualifying: “I like some of the new sounds, purely as sound, that are coming out of pop music.”
Continue reading...An impromptu dance masterclass became an instant highlight, but Steven Soderbergh’s directorial shakeup delivered a ceremony with few highs and frequent depressions
In a skewiff ceremony of overlong speeches, quiet applause and a downsized red carpet, one moment effortlessly stole the show: Glenn Close doing the dance to the 1988 funk hit Da Butt.
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