The actor, who played Screech in the high-school sitcom, had recently been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer
Actor Dustin Diamond, best known for playing Screech on high school sitcom Saved by the Bell, has died at the age of 44.
Diamond had been diagnosed last month with stage 4 small cell carcinoma, or lung cancer, and been in treatment ever since. His representative Roger Paul confirmed the news of his death.
Continue reading...Manson describes allegations as ‘horrible distortions of reality’ after record label drops him from their roster
Evan Rachel Wood has accused her former partner Marilyn Manson of years of “horrific” abuse.
In an Instagram post, the actor wrote:
Continue reading...‘We had giant models made of our heads and got dancers to do it looking like us’
When I auditioned for Steps, we had to dance to a demo of 5,6,7,8. I remember thinking: “Thank God it’s a line dance.” I wasn’t a trained dancer and learning a proper routine would have probably scuppered my chances. But, after the management told me I’d made it, they said: “That’s going to be the first single.” I was like: “Oh no!” Line-dancing was something your mum did. I was 19 and wanted to go clubbing.
Continue reading...Seven centuries after the poet was found guilty in Florence, Sperello di Serego Alighieri has begun a campaign to clear his ancestor’s name
The reputation of Dante Alighieri needs little burnishing: his Divine Comedy, tracing the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, is widely regarded as one of the greatest works ever written. But more than 700 years after Dante was accused of corruption and condemned to be burned to death, his descendant is looking to clear his name.
Sperello di Serego Alighieri, an astrophysicist, and the law professor Alessandro Traversi are working to see if Dante’s 1302 sentencing for corruption in political office can be reversed.
Continue reading...The popularity of classic shows in the past year is about more than nostalgia – what pulls us back in is their relevance to today
At least Covid struck during the age of “peak TV”. After all, were this not a time when the shows being piped into our living rooms were better, smarter, starrier, more plentiful and more readily available than ever before, what would we have done to stay on an even keel through a year in lockdown?
Pretty much what we did anyway, it turns out. Because the viewing trend of the past 12 months, which few saw coming, has been a clamour for the classics. At a time when there is more box-fresh prestige entertainment than you can shake a battered remote at, viewers on both sides of the Atlantic decided instead to reacquaint themselves with old friends: Rodney Trotter, Jerry Seinfeld and, overwhelmingly, Tony Soprano.
Continue reading...He played a redemption-seeking redneck on TV, but lately the actor has found solace off-screen, travelling with his camera. He talks about slackers, the Mallrats sequel and breezing into one-horse towns
Jason Lee knew he was in trouble when he stepped on the set. The year was 1992, Sonic Youth were at their peak and he was starring as a doomed skateboarder in their latest video. As a music obsessed, pro skateboarder with acting aspirations, he felt he had a point to prove. To add more pressure, it was for the song 100% – the band’s classic ode to a murdered Black Flag roadie – and the video was being co-directed by one of his skateboarding friends (some guy called Spike Jonze).
“I was really trying my hardest to focus,” says Lee. “I was like pretending to be Robert De Niro on the set, really trying to get into it and make it count and make it real and believable.”
Continue reading...A thrilling documentary made with a blend of animation and archive footage tells an immensely powerful tale of a gay Afghan survivor
In what’s proving to be a rather sub-par Sundance (an understandable blip given the unusual nature of this year’s virtual festival), it’s a genuine thrill to encounter a film as exciting and immediate as Flee, a much-needed jolt of energy now reverberating on laptop screens across the country. Even in a traditional year, it’s the kind of audacious and uniquely told story that would have attendees excitedly buzzing around Park City, urging others to seek out, and despite the fractured nature of this year’s edition, a swell of digital support has helped it nab a seven-figure deal with Neon (helped also perhaps by its star producers Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), this year’s first big sale, a well-earned reward for what’s likely to be the best film of the festival.
Related: Passing review – Rebecca Hall's elegant but inert directorial debut
Continue reading...Lisa Enroth was chosen from 12,000 applicants to be Gothenburg film festival’s castaway on Pater Noster
Scandinavia’s biggest film festival is going ahead this year despite the coronavirus pandemic, but will be hosted on an isolated island and admit only one attendee – a healthcare worker, who has been selected from 12,000 applicants.
Lisa Enroth, a Swedish nurse and film fan, was chosen to be the 2021 Gothenburg film festival’s castaway who will spend a week on the remote island of Pater Noster watching film after film.
Continue reading...Ahead of their new double album, Femi and Made Kuti reflect on the Afrobeat pioneer’s legacy, their complex family, and the problems Nigeria still faces
The night 1,000 soldiers descended on Fela Kuti’s home, set it on fire and threw his elderly mother out of the window is etched into his family’s memory and music folklore for ever. On 18 February 1977, Fela’s eldest son, Femi, was at school when the compound – known as the Kalakuta Republic, a raucous commune that the musician had declared an independent state – was raided, a violent retaliation to the album Zombie, Fela’s biting attack on the mindless personnel of Nigeria’s military regime. Femi returned to find friends had been beaten, women raped.
“We all thought my father was dead on that day,” says Femi, who was in his teens at the time. Fela survived, but his mother’s fall proved fatal. “It was like a war zone. It took me several years to overcome that nightmare. Even seeing soldiers on the streets as a young boy, I was afraid they’d attack me because I was Fela’s son.”
Continue reading...Singer Eric Burdon pays tribute to his fellow band member who ‘didn’t just play but lived’ their classic The House of the Rising Sun
Hilton Valentine, founding guitarist of the 60s group the Animals, has died aged 77.
Valentine’s death was confirmed by the band’s label ABKCO Music, who wrote in a statement on Twitter on Saturdy night: “Our deepest sympathies go out to Hilton Valentine’s family and friends on his passing this morning, at the age of 77.”
Continue reading...The Oscar-nominated actor on his new novel set during a production of Henry IV, dealing with bad reviews and art’s role in examining all human behaviour
Ethan Hawke is an actor, writer and director, star of the films Dead Poets Society, Training Day and Boyhood. He has been nominated for Academy Awards for his acting, and for his writing on Before Sunset and Before Midnight. Hawke describes theatre as his first love and has featured in a number of plays by Sam Shepard, as well as in productions of work by Shakespeare, Chekhov, and his own second cousin twice-removed, Tennessee Williams.
Hawke’s first novel, The Hottest State, was published in 1996. His second, Ash Wednesday, came out in 2002. Now, with A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke brings us a novel that is structured around a stage production of Henry IV, Part 1. The book’s narrator, William Harding, is a hard-drinking film star who seeks to overcome a period of personal turmoil by throwing himself into his role as Henry Percy.
Continue reading...From productions for Charli XCX and Gaika to Sophie’s emotionally shattering solo works, we celebrate a truly singular artist who has died aged 34
This was the track that brought Sophie, the Scottish producer who has died aged 34 following an accidental fall, to wider attention, and how could it not. The opening sounds like an alert announcing a malfunction on a clown car assembly line, all sproings and sirens; these polished, corporate sonics would become a hallmark of the producer’s early work, revelling in the kitsch of the smartphone age. But unlike producers with similar satiric intentions like James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never, you could dance to Sophie – and Bipp is so deliriously danceable.
Continue reading...As a huge box set of his work is released, the 87-year-old British bluesman reminisces about the thrill of discovering boogie-woogie piano and buying his first six-string in Japan
I lived in Acre Lane in Cheadle Hulme, Greater Manchester, and became a teenager on 29 November 1946. My parents had divorced and I lived with my mother and my grandfather. The house was a bit crowded, so I built a tree house in the garden, which basically became my room, my world. I built it with window frames and tarpaulin, but eventually it had a paraffin lamp, a bed and all my 78rpm records and such up there. It was about 25ft (7.6 metres) up an oak tree.
Continue reading...The Great Gatsby is out of US copyright and fans of Fitzgerald’s novel have rushed to pay tribute with new books and fanfiction. What does it mean for the novel’s legacy?
On 2 January this year, the day after The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain, The Great Gatsby Undead was self-published on Amazon. Like F Scott Fitzgerald’s hallowed novel, it is narrated by Nick Carraway, but in this version, according to the promotional blurb, “Gatsby doesn’t seem to eat anything, and has an aversion to silver, garlic, and the sun”. Gatsby, you see, is a vampire.
More than 25m copies of The Great Gatsby have been sold since it was first published in 1925, and the expiration of copyright, 95 years after it was released, opens the door to anything and everything fans might want to do with it. The start of the year also brought the release of The Gay Gatsby (“Everyone’s got something to hide, but the secrets come out at Gaylord Gatsby’s parties – the gayest affairs West Egg ever had…”), and Jay the Great, a “modern retelling” of the story. On the fan fiction site Archive of Our Own (AO3), someone has uploaded a version of the novel that search-and-replaces Gatsby with Gritty, the name of the furry mascot for the Philadelphia Flyers ice hockey team. As one Twitter wit put it: “The Great Gatsby’s out of copyright? Sounds like we’ve been given the green light.”
Continue reading...The Mighty Jambo Circus Academy in Nairobi has resumed daily training after months of closure due to coronavirus restrictions
Continue reading...She may be 80 and cut off by Covid, but she’s still ready to walk all over Donald Trump. As her greatest songs are reissued, she reflects on the sexual politics of the 60s, her friendship with Elvis and her hopes for peace in the US
Nancy Sinatra has one of the most famous surnames in America, but she has struggled to feel proudly American of late. It’s a couple of weeks away from the inauguration of Joe Biden, and the singer and film star is recalling Donald Trump’s preparations for his own inauguration in 2017: his first dance with his wife Melania would be to her father’s signature hit, My Way.
Sinatra was disgusted. Her father was no fan of Trump: according to Frank’s former manager, he told Trump to “go fuck himself” after the billionaire refused to meet Frank’s fee for a 1990 performance at an Atlantic City casino. Nancy, in a since deleted tweet to Trump, wrote: “Just remember the first line of the song.” My Way begins: “And now the end is near.”
Continue reading...You don’t have to be a redditer or a big investor to enjoy these Hollywood blockbusters that double as the perfect educational resource
The GameStop debacle has put the stock market on everyone’s radar this week – even those who rarely pay it any attention. Many are depicting the incident as a David-and-Goliath battle between small investors gathering on Reddit message-boards and Wall Street powerbrokers finding themselves unexpectedly on the back foot at their own game. Billions of dollars are in the balance.
Along with such major news events, though, come the instant internet experts. Let’s face it: most of us understand diddly squat about the stock market and rely on Hollywood to inform us about an industry that it portrays as a place in which, to quote from the tyrannical, fictional Gordan Gekko: “lunch is for wimps”.
Continue reading...A hearing girl with a deaf family is torn between two worlds in a well-intentioned but conventional attempt to win over audiences
There’s an earnest old-fashioned Sundance-ness to writer-director Sian Heder’s broad comedy-drama Coda, the kind of warm-hearted crowd-pleaser that the festival is most widely known for. In any normal year, it would probably have been met with audible approval throughout its premiere. But this isn’t a normal year, with the majority of festival goers watching the film at home, perhaps less pumped up by the thrill of seeing it with a crowd. With or without an audience, it’s a minor film, a little too formulaic at times, a tad too comfortable sticking to a dog-eared playbook, eager to be loved but not really trying hard enough to be remembered.
Related: Sundance 2021: which films might break out this year?
Continue reading...Exclusive: Dennis Harvey, the critic whose review of Promising Young Woman prompted outrage from its star and an apology from his editors, has spoken out
Dennis Harvey, the veteran film critic whose review of Promising Young Woman has sparked a furore across the industry, has hit back at accusations of misogyny amid calls for Variety to fire him.
Harvey’s review was published more than a year ago, following the film’s premiere at the Sundance film festival. Largely positive, it called Mulligan’s performance “skilful, entertaining and challenging” while also querying the central casting. While “a fine actress”, wrote Harvey, Mulligan “seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale”.
Continue reading...Male writer’s comments on Carey Mulligan’s looks said to highlight ‘double standards’ in industry
Film criticism is facing renewed condemnation over a lack of diversity after a review deemed by many – including its subject – to be alarmingly sexist.
“I just couldn’t believe it,” said Carey Mulligan, who was judged by the veteran Variety reviewer Dennis Harvey to be insufficiently attractive to convince in her latest role.
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