The German Fernweh translates as a longing to be elsewhere. For Teju Cole this means Switzerland – which he visits ever year to write and photograph the country’s desolate beauty
Continue reading...Category Archives: Culture
Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend and star of Spartacus, dies aged 103
Square-jawed star of Paths of Glory and Lust For Life leaves legacy ‘that will endure for generations’, says son Michael Douglas
Kirk Douglas, the self-styled “ragman’s son” who became the last great star of Hollywood’s golden age, has died at the age of 103.
His son Michael announced the news in a statement posted on Instagram on Wednesday evening.
Continue reading...New Zealand’s Waitangi Day 2020 celebrations – in pictures
Jacinda Ardern has spent several days at the Waitangi treaty grounds, meeting Māori chiefs and iwi members
Continue reading...How a new Sesame Street show is bringing Muppet magic to refugee camps
Three new Muppets, Basma, Jad, and Ma’zooza, will star in new show for the millions of children displaced across the Middle East
Cooperation, kindness and the alphabet. For over 50 years, the characters of Sesame Street, from the Cookie Monster to Big Bird, have helped children from diverse backgrounds navigate the challenges of life as a small person in a big world.
From the moment it launched, Sesame Street has unflinchingly dealt with difficult issues – and from this week they are bringing their special brand of magic to the children who need them the most.
Continue reading...The Oscars’ 92-year gender gap, visualised
This year’s all-male nominations for best director are just the latest episode in a long history of women being under-represented at the Academy Awards. We look at the data
The 92nd Academy Awards take place this Sunday. But as a new decade begins, it appears little has improved in the fight for gender equality in Hollywood. Ungendered awards categories are once again dominated by men. Ahead of this year’s ceremony, we examine how the imbalance breaks down. Carry on scrolling to explore.
Continue reading...Grand Theft Auto mastermind Dan Houser leaves Rockstar Games
Co-writer of the multimillion-selling series to step down in March, leaving questions over long-awaited sixth instalment
Dan Houser, a co-founder of Rockstar Games, is leaving his post in March, according to the developer’s parent company Take-Two Interactive. Houser was lead writer on the multimillion-selling Grand Theft Auto series, as well as other Rockstar hits including the acclaimed western adventure Red Dead Redemption.
In a statement to investors on Tuesday, Take-Two stated that Houser, who was creative vice president at the studio, would leave Rockstar on 11 March after taking an “extended break”, which began in spring last year. Houser’s brother Sam, with whom he co-founded Rockstar Games in 1998, will stay on as company president.
Continue reading...Scenes from Santiago: Chile’s protests spill from streets to stage
The city’s theatre is emotional, indignant and polemical finds our critic on a whirlwind trip through a dozen shows
The sparky young performers on stage thank us for coming out tonight. There are so many other things we could have been doing, they tell us, before launching into their show, Too Much Sexual Freedom Will Turn You Into Terrorists. “Burning subways” gets the biggest laugh. We are, after all, in Santiago, where only three months ago people took to the streets and did exactly that. Even now, in spite of soaring summer temperatures, Chileans continue to protest every weekend. Their list of complaints ranges from inadequate private pensions to an out-of-touch president.
The graffiti creeping across every surface calls for an end to police violence, for the renationalisation of water and for the indigenous Mapuche people to fight back. Sprayed everywhere is the figure 6% – President Sebastián Piñera’s popularity rating.
Continue reading...Joaquin Phoenix’s attack on Baftas for ‘systemic racism’ applauded
Actor’s speech addressing issues of diversity and reputation meets with ‘uncomfortable silence’ – and much praise
Joaquin Phoenix’s powerful broadside against the body that awarded him the best actor prize on Sunday night has met with a chorus of praise across the film industry.
In his speech, Phoenix said he felt conflicted by his victory “because so many of my fellow actors who are deserving don’t have that same privilege”.
Continue reading...Devon museum in repatriation dispute over indigenous relics
Efforts to recover the 19th-century regalia of a Blackfoot Nation leader began in 2008
A British museum is resisting attempts from Canada to secure the repatriation of sacred relics of a 19th-century indigenous chief because the centre where his descendants want to locate them is not an accredited museum, but the final decision lies with local councillors in England.
In an increasingly acrimonious dispute, backers of the campaign to repatriate regalia belonging to Crowfoot of the Blackfoot Nation were told by officials at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (RAMM) in Exeter that “no one wants to get their hands dirty” when it came to the sensitive question of repatriating looted artefacts held in UK arts institutions.
Continue reading...Joaquin Phoenix urges people to ‘go vegan’
The Baftas awards frontrunner joins protestors on Tower Bridge in London to campaign for a meat-free world
Oscar and Bafta nominee Joaquin Phoenix has made a plea for people to “go vegan” as he led an animal equality protest in central London.
The actor gathered activists for a protest where he dropped a 390-square-foot banner from Tower Bridge that declared: “Factory farming destroys our planet. Go vegan.”
Continue reading...Rachel Maddow on her critics: ‘Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on! Give me more!’
The MSNBC host’s show has become a safety blanket for many US progressives. She discusses her demonisation by the right, tackling the president’s lies – and coming out at 17
Rachel Maddow, the US TV host, has a message for her critics: “Bring it. Your hatred makes me stronger. Come on. Give me more. Give me more. I love it!”
That is just as well, given the way she has polarised viewers in the past few years. Maddow, 46, has presented her primetime show on MSNBC, a 24-hour cable news channel, on weeknights since 2008. If most cable news and social media is fast food, she tries to rustle up a three-course meal: sensible, sober, sometimes painfully detailed and replete with oblique references to half-forgotten politicians of yesteryear. Since Donald Trump’s rise in 2016, however, The Rachel Maddow Show has become a nightly safety blanket for many progressives who identify with the “resistance”.
Continue reading...Hostile politicians, cuts and controversy: why the BBC has never been so vulnerable
After a shocking week for the broadcaster, what are the issues it must tackle to keep its place in the nation’s cultural landscape?
In his eye-catching pitch for his new job as chair of the powerful parliamentary group that monitors the BBC, Julian Knight, MP for Solihull, promised, among other things, to run the culture, media and sport select committee, as an “unofficial ‘Royal Commission’ on the future of the corporation”.
Last Thursday, a victorious Knight swiftly underlined his plan to “ask difficult questions about the BBC’s future funding model”. He also applauded a suggestion from fellow MP James Cartlidge that a more commercial BBC could become “a top export service”. These words sent a renewed January chill down the corridors of New Broadcasting House.
Continue reading...Andy Gill, influential guitarist with Gang of Four, dies aged 64
Gill’s guitar sound inspired Kurt Cobain, Michael Stipe and Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose debut album he produced
Andy Gill, the guitarist with Gang of Four, whose sound influenced generations of post-punk bands, has died aged 64.
The news was announced by the band on their social media channels on Saturday. No cause of death has yet been announced, but they referred to him as “listening to mixes for the upcoming record, whilst planning the next tour from his hospital bed”.
Continue reading...MIA launches crowdfunding drive to avoid platforms that ‘sell data to Cambridge Analytica’
The musician has promised music and videos to her Patreon supporters, and the possibility of recipes and dating advice
MIA has launched a crowdfunding page to support her future work – which may encompass therapy sessions, dating advice and recipes in addition to the music for which she is best known.
MIA, AKA Maya Arulpragasam, said that she had joined the site Patreon because her work was too broad to fit on other sites. “I’ve tried all the other platforms and it’s like: this one is too mean and hateful, this one is too fake and self-obsessed and this one just sells all your data to Cambridge Analytica. Hopefully, this one is going to be just right.”
Continue reading...The Crown will end after season five, with Imelda Staunton as Queen
Creator Peter Morgan reveals fifth season will be the last of the Netflix drama
The fifth series of Netflix’s The Crown will be its last, its creator and writer, Peter Morgan, has revealed, as Imelda Staunton is confirmed to replace Olivia Colman as the Queen.
Fans of the critically acclaimed show, watched by more than 73m households worldwide, had hoped for a sixth series, which Morgan himself had originally planned. But, he said he believed it was time to stop.
Continue reading...Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube to block New York Times article, jury hears
Israeli private detective firm employed by mogul to try to foil publication of sexual misconduct allegations, New York court told
The jury in the New York rape trial of Harvey Weinstein has heard that the once-powerful movie mogul employed the Israeli private investigation firm Black Cube to try to squash a New York Times article that blew the lid on sexual misconduct allegations against him and sparked the #MeToo movement.
Dev Sen, a corporate lawyer at the prestigious New York law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, told the court that his company had acted as go-between connecting the beleaguered movie producer to Black Cube. The private detective firm has a staff largely consisting of alumni of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
Continue reading...Talking About Trees review – how the lights went out in Sudan’s cinemas
This poignant and witty documentary focuses on four directors whose careers were stalled by a military coup thirty years ago
This witty and engaging cinephile documentary begins surreally with its subjects, four older male Sudanese film-makers, recreating the famous “closeup” scene from Sunset Boulevard. None of these directors has worked properly in years, since a military coup in 1989 triggered the collapse of Sudan’s film industry for religious and economic reasons. Now a power cut prevents them from even watching a movie, so they make do. Ibrahim Shaddad wraps a blue chiffon scarf coquettishly around his face as Norma Desmond, simpering: “I’m ready for my closeup.”
Films are oxygen for these men, and Talking About Trees follows their mission to reopen a neglected outdoor movie theatre near Khartoum and give away tickets. There are almost no cinemas left in Sudan. As plans go, it looks as rickety as the 12ft ladders they climb to scrub the crumbling walls of the cinema. The four amigos – Shaddad, Suliman Ibrahim, Eltayeb Mahdi and Manar Al-Hilo – repaint the peeling sign, print posters and canvass the local community to decide what film to show first. (The people pick Django Unchained.) They accept setbacks philosophically, with stoicism and amusement. Shaddad finds it hilarious when the general from the morality police dealing with their request for a permit gives them the runaround, disappearing off to pray for two hours.
Continue reading...Weinstein trial: witness says mogul screamed at her for refusing threesome
Dawn Dunning describes experience of Weinstein ‘towering over’ her and allegedly demanding she have threesome with assistant
A witness at the Harvey Weinstein rape trial in New York described on Wednesday the moment the movie mogul allegedly screamed at her that she would never make it in the film business, after she refused to have a threesome with him and his assistant.
Dawn Dunning, 40, told the jury at the New York supreme court how she had become very scared about what Weinstein might do to her after she tried to get away from the room. “He was screaming. He was a big guy, and he was towering over me. I was really scared.”
Continue reading...Iranian rapper Amir Tataloo arrested in Turkey
Musician was detained in Istanbul after Tehran issued Interpol request
The rapper Amir Tataloo, one of Iran’s most famous musicians, has been detained in Istanbul after an Interpol request from Tehran authorities.
Turkish police confirmed on Tuesday they detained Tataloo, real name Amirhossein Maghsoudloo, in Istanbul’s Fatih district because of an Interpol red notice flagging him as a wanted person.
Continue reading...Philip Pullman calls for boycott of Brexit 50p coin over ‘missing’ Oxford comma
Critics fume over the omission of Oxford comma from phrase ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship’ as new coin enters circulation
It is a debate that has torn the nation in two, ripped friends and family apart, and entrenched deep and uncrossable lines throughout the land. Should the Royal Mint have used an Oxford comma on its Brexit 50p piece?
Three million coins bearing the slogan “Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations” are due to enter circulation from 31 January, with Sajid Javid, chancellor of the exchequer, expressing his hope that the commemorative coin will mark “the beginning of this new chapter” as the UK leaves the European Union.
Continue reading...