Category Archives: Culture

Cocaine Bear: the must-see and must-avoid movie of 2022

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Elizabeth Banks’s new film, about the aftermath of a narcotics drop in a Georgia national park, may be less hilarious than it first sounds

There is a school of thought that Elizabeth Banks’s version of Charlie’s Angels flopped because it was too familiar; it was in effect a reboot of a reboot of an iconic television series that had long wrung itself dry. People knew exactly what to expect from it, so they stayed away. That’s unlikely to happen with her next film, though, because her next film is going to be called Cocaine Bear.

And, I mean, you’re in, right? You’d watch a film called Cocaine Bear. Regardless of quality or budget or genre, you’d watch Cocaine Bear. You wouldn’t even buy your tickets online, because that would rob you of the opportunity to say out loud to a cinema employee: “I would like to spend my own money to watch a film called Cocaine Bear.”

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Indian theatre festival forced to close after Hindu vigilantes object to satirical plays

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Bajrang Dal hardliners in Madhya Pradesh threaten violence over plays ‘disrespectful to the Indian flag’

Rightwing Hindu vigilante groups in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh have forced the cancellation of an annual theatre festival, after threatening violence over satirical plays they accused of being “anti-national”.

The annual theatre festival organised by the Indian People’s Theatre Association in the small town of Chhatarpur became the object of abuse and violent threats by Bajrang Dal, a hardline Hindu group linked with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP).

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Australia in Colour: recolourised film ushers into existence a new kind of fiction

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As the new series of SBS’s film revitalisation project airs, Guardian Australia’s film critic considers the consequences of this trend in film-making

Paolo Cherchi Usai – the Italian curator and former head of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) – once put forward an elegant definition of moving image preservation, calling it “the science of gradual loss and the art of coming to terms with its consequences”. Those melancholic words present the dispossession of our celluloid and digital pasts as inevitable, and efforts to maintain them a will-o’-the-wisp exercise: impossible to achieve, like reaching the gold at the end of the rainbow.

But loss is far from the first thing that comes to mind after watching the second season of SBS’s four-part documentary series Australia in Colour. Separated into different themes, the first episode is devoted to family, exploring issues such as changing gender roles, the stolen generations and the arrival of contraceptive pills; the second, about sport, investigates national heroes and drinking culture.

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‘We knew so little’: the young film-makers who captured early quarantine life

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HBO’s Covid Diaries NYC stitches together five documentary shorts by film-makers between 16-22, covering the dizzying, surreal first days of the pandemic

The middle of March 2021 will bring, for most Americans, a strange, surreal anniversary: the year mark of the horrifying realization – be it through a tweet, a cancellation, a diagnosis of a loved one or a celebrity, a lost job or gig – that the coronavirus was a very real threat that would implode the world as we knew it. For Aracelie Colón, then a 16-year-old high school junior in Manhattan, it was the email announcing a two-week closure from school. For fellow high school junior Shane Fleming, it was the positive diagnosis of a classmate and the closure of the Film Forum, where the movie buff caught a final feature showing on 14 March. For Arlet Guallpa, then 22, it was an ambulance outside her building in Washington Heights, fetching the first of many residents who would succumb to the virus.

Related: 'They refused to act': inside a chilling documentary on Trump's bungled Covid-19 response

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Four women up for best director in strikingly diverse Bafta nominations

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Rocks and Nomadland top scorecard in first British film academy shortlist since radical changes made to improve inclusivity

Four women and three foreign-language directors have been nominated for this year’s Bafta awards in a list whose reach and inclusivity come as a marked contrast to last year’s nominations.

Related: Baftas 2021: the full list of nominations

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Fukushima 50 review – Ken Watanabe in simmering tribute to power-plant heroes

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There’s a touch of Hollywood in this dramatised account of the 50 workers who stayed at Fukushima Daiichi in an attempt to avert catastrophe

Dangerously high concentrations of politeness are observed in this dramatisation of the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Not only do most of the heroic “50” left behind to avert nuclear catastrophe constantly apologise for underperforming in acts of barely believable self-sacrifice, at one point a manager begs forgiveness for refusing to allow two employees to re-enter the radioactive zone after a failed first attempt. To the feckless western mind more likely to view Homer Simpson as the standard-issue nuclear power-plant employee, it’s a relief when – just for a second – a few Fukushima workers contemplate running away.

It is possible director Setsurō Wakamatsu has taken the Hollywood route in portraying the staff as so infallibly courageous – though Fukushima 50 is adapted from journalist Ryusho Kadota’s book, which investigated the response to the earthquake and tsunami in more than 90 interviews. Possibly to avoid lawsuits from Tokyo Electric Power Company executives portrayed here as selfish and shamefully caught on a back foot, everyone in the film is fictionalised – except for prime minister Naoto Kan, though he is never referred to by name, and plant manager Masao Yoshida. Yoshida crucially defies orders and allows the reactors to be cooled with seawater – which prevented meltdown and the possible devastation of Japan’s entire eastern seaboard. The reactors also must be “vented” for pressure manually by workers agonisingly selected for the task. Played by Ken Watanabe as a man having the ultimate bad day at work, the simmering Yoshida looks in need of a similar intervention.

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The Sopranos: David Chase and mobster Johnny Sack on how they made a TV classic

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‘Fox turned down the first draft because I didn’t put any murders in it. People watch mob shows because they like to see murders’

I was still writing the pilot episode when Steven Van Zandt – who would go on to play strip-club owner and second-in-command Silvio Dante – came to read for the part of Tony Soprano. I thought: “With Steven, it could be more like The Simpsons: more comedy, less nasty bits, more absurd.” But once we hired Jim Gandolfini for Tony, it all went back to where it started.

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Now there’s no doubt Meghan and Harry had to leave

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Caught between a hate-filled media and a terrified royal family, the surprise is not that the couple struck out on their own. It’s that they didn’t escape much sooner

A seldom remembered fact about the royal family is that, before the death of Princess Diana, it was not normal to be interested in them. Tabloids were fascinated, but it was more of a convention than news – like a splash about tomatoes causing cancer, it was the out-of-office auto reply of the industry, a fallback. The family (I seriously dislike the affectation of calling them “the Firm”) survived while there was nothing to see. They were caught between two irreconcilable forces – their own culture of discretion, on one side, and intense, 24-hour scrutiny on the other – and they navigated that with a studied blandness. What did they actually care about? Manners, duty, causes, the Commonwealth. Whatever curiosity surrounded them, they simply did not reward it, and the regular response to that, after a few centuries and whatnot, was to not be terribly curious.

You may recall David Blaine, the magician who lived in a glass box above the Thames for 44 days in 2003: people really wanted to know what he was doing, even though we could see what he was doing – and that was mainly nothing. There grew a peculiar resentment of gawping at something that was only interesting because it was untouchable. But we could see for ourselves that it was not interesting – and then everyone got annoyed and some of us (not me) threw eggs. Eventually, hawkers started selling eggs. That pretty much sums up the experience of the royals pre-1997.

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Clara Amfo: ‘Don’t make me dim my light’

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For Clara Amfo, success is nothing without honesty, integrity – and a pinch of impostor syndrome. Here, the broadcaster talks about race, relationships and becoming a Barbie doll

Clara Amfo makes me want to join in with life. When she talks about the new series of Drag Race UK, I itch to go and watch it. When she’s dancing on Strictly, I want to tune into a show that doesn’t usually hold my attention. And when she’s describing the party scene in her parents’ home country of Ghana, “fast becoming the Ibiza of West Africa – honestly I was last there in December 2019 and everyone was out there”, I find myself wondering about flights. Which is quite something, a year into a pandemic, when spirits are flagging and the will is so weak it might give up entirely. But she knows all about that too, which is why her daytime Radio 1 show, every weekday, works so well.

People text in saying they live alone, they work from home, they just needed to hear that tune she played, that friendly voice. Amfo physically gets up and goes in to work at Broadcasting House, speaking to the nation and meeting the skeleton crew who are still in the building, under endless Covid-testing regulations, “but I do live alone, and I get it,” she says. “I know I have definitely experienced loneliness in this thing. At the risk of sounding trite, well it’s been a time of gratitude, hasn’t it? – but I also believe that everybody, no matter what your life or what you do for a living, should be allowed to have a moan. I’m single and happily single but there have been a few nights where I’ve been like, you know what? Be nice to have a sofa buddy,” she explains, over video chat from the one-bedroom flat in Hackney that she got in a part-buy, part-rent housing scheme seven years ago and that she has grown out of, but not yet managed to leave. (It hasn’t always been thus – “Many memories were made in this flat, that’s for sure,” she says, with a dirty laugh.)

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Minari director Lee Isaac Chung: ‘My friends back in Arkansas are the audience I wanted to connect with’

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The film-maker on how his rural childhood inspired the Golden Globe-winning Minari, now a strong contender for an Academy Award

Oenanthe javanica, AKA water celery or Japanese parsley, is a herb used in various Asian cuisines; in Korea it’s known as minari. “It’s the type of plant you put into food to provide a little bit more of a kick,” says Korean-American film-maker Lee Isaac Chung. Chung didn’t like it himself as a child, but his grandmother planted it on the Arkansas farm where the director grew up, and Minari is now the title of his new feature – a fictionalised evocation of his childhood.

The herb is known for flourishing where other plants struggle – making Minari a suitable name for a story about the fight to put down roots, as Chung’s family did when they arrived in Arkansas in the 1970s. Seen through the eyes of seven-year-old David Yi, Minari is a lyrical, often droll story about family ties, cultural identity and the problems kids might have with a grandmother they love, but who can be weird and embarrassing, too. Minari won the grand jury prize and the audience award in Sundance last year, and last week won best foreign language film at the Golden Globes, with Oscar hopes ahead.

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Vive la Commune? The working-class insurrection that shook the world

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As Paris prepares to commemorate the 150th anniversary, the communards’ vision of a new form of radical democracy is once again dividing France

A couple of years ago, as railway workers demonstrated in Paris against proposed government reforms, a banner in the crowd offered a blast from France’s revolutionary past: “We don’t care about May ’68,” read its slogan. “We want 1871.”

It was a message that the protesters meant business. These days, the students’ revolt of 1968, and its injunctions to “Be realistic … demand the impossible”, are remembered with fond nostalgia. But in the annals of French revolutionary upheavals, the memory of the Paris Commune of 1871 and its bloody barricades has a darker, edgier status. “Unlike 1789, the Commune was never truly integrated into the national story,” says Mathilde Larrère, a historian specialising in the radical movements of 19th-century France. Wild, anarchic and dominated by the Parisian poor, the Commune was loathed by the liberal bourgeoisie as well as by the conservatives and monarchists of the right. Its savage suppression by the French army, and its own acts of brutal violence, created wounds that never healed. “The Commune of 1871 didn’t become part of a consensual collective memory,” says Larrère. In respectable society, it was viewed as beyond the pale.

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Sir Alex Ferguson: ‘I feared I would never speak again’

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Former Manchester United manager tells of brain surgery worries ahead of documentary about his life

Sir Alex Ferguson has said he feared he would never be able to speak again after suffering a brain haemorrhage in 2018. The former Manchester United manager told a Q&A at Glasgow film festival he was worried that he could lose his voice and memory after undergoing emergency surgery.

A new documentary about the two-time Champions League-winning manager premiered at the the film festival on Saturday.

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Viet Thanh Nguyen: ‘I always felt displaced no matter where I was’

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The Pulitzer-winning author on difficult second novel syndrome, using humour to explore trauma, and the return to a ‘more efficient version of American imperialism’

The Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen’s second novel, The Committed, is the sequel to his celebrated debut, The Sympathizer, a spy thriller set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war that was both a New York Times bestseller and winner of the 2016 Pulitzer prize for fiction. The Sympathizer established Nguyen as both a literary star and an advocate for displaced people around the world. In The Committed, his unnamed protagonist arrives, as a refugee, in 1970s Paris, looking to shore up his identity on a diet of drug-dealing gangsterism and poststructuralist theory. Nguyen is a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity, and comparative literature at the University of Southern California as well as a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times.

You’ve written about the ease of writing your first novel. How was it sitting down to write your second with a Pulitzer under your belt?
It was certainly more challenging, not necessarily because of heightened expectations but because of the publicity around the Pulitzer. I got very distracted doing interviews and lectures and all of that. With The Sympathizer I had two years of total concentration because nobody knew who I was. With The Committed, I had to write it in bits and pieces with lots of interruptions.

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‘You think: are we really doing this?’: how TV’s strangest shows get made

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Who green-lit The Masked Singer, or dreamed up a dating show about Prince Harry? Insiders reveal how madcap ideas go from page to small-screen sensation

Nine years ago, TV developer Park Won Woo was taking a break in a car park after shooting auditions for a South Korean talent show. He had worked on number of similar programmes throughout his career, but had come to feel uneasy about their format. “They’re not always fair,” he recalls thinking, because on numerous occasions, people seemed to win because of their looks, not their talent. A solution popped into his head: what if the singers wore masks?

For three years, nobody wanted Park’s show, the idea for which evolved to feature celebrities behind the masks. The 48-year-old had 24 years’ experience in the TV industry, but his idea was rejected by network after network. “I felt sheer desperation,” he tells me.

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Amanda Gorman tells of being followed by security guard who said she looked ‘suspicious’

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Poet, acclaimed for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, tweeted ‘this is the reality of black girls’

Amanda Gorman, the poet who won acclaim for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has told of being followed home and accosted by a security guard who allegedly claimed she looked suspicious.

She said the incident, on Friday night, was emblematic of “the reality of black girls” in the US, in which “one day you’re called an icon” but the next day considered a threat.

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‘It is the question of the century’: will tech solve the climate crisis – or make it worse?

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Robots on coral reefs, vast barriers to hold back the glaciers, simulated volcanic eruptions to offset global heating ... Can technology repair the mess we have made? Elizabeth Kolbert is not convinced

Elizabeth Kolbert’s favourite movie is the end-of-the-world comedy Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. For those who need a quick recap, this cold war film features a deranged US air force general who orders a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union using weapons developed by a mad Nazi scientist played by Peter Sellers. A last-minute glitch almost forestalls an apocalyptic war, but a gung-ho B-52 pilot has other ideas. He opens the bomb doors and mounts the H-bomb as if it were a horse, waving his hat and whooping as he rides the missile towards the world’s oblivion. No heroism could be more misguided. No movie could end with a blunter message: how on Earth can we humans trust ourselves with planet-altering technology?

The same absurdly serious question lies at the heart of Kolbert’s new book, Under a White Sky. The Sixth Extinction, her previous book, won a Pulitzer prize for its investigation into how mankind has devastated the natural world. Now she has widened her gaze to whether we can remedy this with ingenious technological fixes – or make things worse. “There was definitely a question left hanging: now we have become such a dominant force on planet Earth, and created so many problems through our intervention, what happens next?”, she says.

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‘I was worried Lindsay, Paris or Britney would die’: why the 00s were so toxic for women

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Body shaming, media harassment, relentless cruelty – it’s time to reassess the decade that feminism forgot

I went to university in 2007. On my first day, every fresher had their photo taken; the pictures were pinned to a bulletin board in my halls. That evening, older male students scrawled on the photographs of the girls, rating our attractiveness. No one got in trouble. Later, the same men published a gossip magazine that Photoshopped images of female students on to porn stars, dissected our sex lives and made rape jokes. The magazine was printed using university funds. No one got kicked out. None of this seemed particularly objectionable to me, an 18-year-old girl. This was just the way things were. Internalised misogyny ran deep in the 2000s. Hell, I was just happy I got a high score on my photograph.

Related: The Guide: Staying In – sign up for our home entertainment tips

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‘A symbolic moment’: Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview marks turning point

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The conversation, expected to draw millions of viewers, could mark the transition from royalty to Hollywood elite

It may be an American coronation of sorts.

When Oprah Winfrey’s highly anticipated and potentially explosive interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex airs in its primetime spot on Sunday evening, millions across the US are expected to watch. It will be the couple’s first interview since since stepping back from their royal duties in early 2020, but it could also mark the moment that the Sussexes evolve from British royalty to Hollywood elite.

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