New Orleans and Cuban musicians join in Havana’s annual jazz festival, defying Trump’s efforts to weaken US-Cuba relations
Continue reading...Category Archives: Culture
Tom Hanks becomes honorary citizen of Greece
Actor and family given honour for ‘exceptional services’ after helping wildfire victims
Of all the roles Tom Hanks has ever played, being himself and being Greek may be the easiest yet. Or at least that is how it would seem from the Hollywood star’s jubilant reaction to his becoming an honorary citizen of the country.
“Starting 2020 as an honorary citizen of all of Greece!” the actor, a convert to Greek Orthodoxy, said on social media. “Kronia pola! (more or less, ‘happy year!’). Hanx”
Continue reading...Oscars 2020: Joker leads pack – but Academy just trumps Baftas for diversity
- Joker nominated for 11 awards
- 1917, The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood up for 10
- Little Women and Parasite take six nominations
- Cynthia Erivo sole non-white acting nominee
- Oscar nominations: full list for 2020
Less than a week since Bafta’s strikingly white and male awards shortlist met with widespread criticism – including from the organisation’s own chief executive – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has released a set of nominations whose small concessions to diversity seem striking by contrast.
Cynthia Erivo is nominated for best actress for her role in a biopic of abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and Parasite – Bong Joon-ho’s acclaimed South Korean black comedy – is up for six awards, including best director and best picture.
Continue reading...Brian Blessed: ‘All my life, 90% of men have bored the arse off me’
Dressed in pyjamas and wellies, the great actor talks about his astronaut training in Russia, the original Cats – and putting his might behind his daughter Rosalind’s very personal plays
On a shelf in Brian Blessed’s study is a plastic toy, a replica of himself as Prince Vultan in the film Flash Gordon. There is a resemblance but, with this actor, the very idea of a miniature seems wrong.
The mountainous original is sitting at his desk, wearing a striking winter morning costume of red fleece, pyjama bottoms and wellington boots. He must be the hairiest 83-year-old man in existence, his huge head crowned by a thick grey thatch, his neck Tudor-ruffed by what seem metres of white beard.
Continue reading...Raising the bar: Hashi Mohamed’s journey from child refugee to top lawyer
He defied a life of poverty and hardship to reach Oxford and become a barrister. Now Hashi Mohamed has written a book which aims to rethink the stalled project of social mobility
• Read an extract from Hashi Mohamed’s People Like Us
• Read an extract from Hashi Mohamed’s People Like Us
Hashi Mohamed is a 36-year-old barrister. He has the accent, a mentor once told of him, of someone who’s “been to Eton” and the confidence of a natural orator. If you had to place him within the complex matrix of the British class system, you’d probably say he was the son of wealthy Africans who attended an independent school and Oxbridge.
In fact, Mohamed is a Somali who was born in Kenya, where he lived in a rundown part of Nairobi with his four siblings (another having died), his mother (who also had six children from a previous marriage) and his travelling salesman father. When his father died in a car accident in 1993, Mohamed and three of his siblings were sent to England as refugees.
Continue reading...American Oligarchs review: Trump, Kushner and the melding of money and power
Andrea Bernstein delivers the goods on the bad business which propelled two New York families to Washington
America’s cold civil war rages, impeachment inches ahead and Donald Trump remains a focal point of conflict. As for Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, he is markedly more unpopular than his wife, her father or her gun-toting brother. Donald Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump are rated among the top Republican contenders for 2024.
Related: Trump Jr and Ivanka Trump ‘knew they were lying’ over ploy to sell condos, book claims
Continue reading...Czech new wave director Ivan Passer dies aged 86
Passer was a key figure in the Czech new wave before moving to the US, where his best known film was the cult thriller Cutter’s Way
Ivan Passer, the film-maker who was a key figure in the Czech new wave and who went on to direct the thriller Cutter’s Way after emigrating to the US, has died aged 86. Variety reported that an associate of his family confirmed the news.
Passer, who was born in Prague in 1933, spent his career inextricably associated with, and to some extent overshadowed by, his friend and fellow Czech director Miloš Forman. The pair met as schoolboys and studied together at the Prague Film Academy; they both became part of a group of film-makers who took advantage of a slight weakening of the communist government’s iron grip in the late 50s and early 60s. “We were all united, one way or another, with desire to expose the regime on the screen,” Passer told the LA Times. “And we got away with it because the regime was melting.”
Continue reading...Is Kristen Stewart too good for big-budget blockbusters?
The Twilight lead turned arthouse mainstay is delving back into the mainstream yet again with $80m monster movie Underwater but it’s another awkward fit
There are two sorts of movie stars, and the demands of the market are such that the first type must occasionally pretend to be the second type. The first type is the critical darling, accomplished thespians who command crowds of screaming admirers at Cannes even though they may not be household names. They appear in glowingly reviewed indies and attract the attention of international auteurs, regularly landing on year-end best-of lists and awards lineups. They inspire rapturous reviews filled with flowery prose about nuance and subtlety, the exquisite artistry of the acting craft, et cetera.
Related: Underwater review – Kristen Stewart's soggy, silly monster movie
Continue reading...Brazilian judge orders Netflix to remove ‘gay Jesus’ comedy
Rio judge’s ruling follows complaint that the ‘honour of millions of Catholics’ was hurt by The First Temptation of Christ
A Brazilian judge on Wednesday ordered Netflix to stop showing a Christmas special that some called blasphemous for depicting Jesus as a gay man and which prompted a bomb attack on the satirists behind the programme.
The ruling by a Rio de Janeiro judge, Benedicto Abicair, responded to a petition by a Brazilian Catholic organisation that argued the “honour of millions of Catholics” was hurt by the airing of The First Temptation of Christ. The special was produced by the Rio-based film company Porta dos Fundos, whose headquarters was targeted in the Christmas Eve attack.
Continue reading...Too woke? Nope – Doctor Who is more offensive than ever
Since returning with a female Doctor, the sci-fi smash has been accused of political correctness. But, as recent storylines prove, the truth is far worse
Doctor Who returned last week with another first: Sacha Dhawan’s casting as the first person of colour to play the Doctor’s arch nemesis, the Master. The decision was broadly met with praise, but in darker corners of the internet the argument that the show has become too politically correct rages on.
“Too PC” has become a familiar jibe levelled at the sci-fi hit since 2018 when Jodie Whittaker became the Thirteenth Doctor and new showrunner Chris Chibnall took up the mantle. As well as the first woman to play the title role, their first series featured two BAME companions and episodes about Rosa Parks and the partition of India, written by Doctor Who’s first ever BAME writers. The show quickly found itself embroiled in a culture war, with talk of its apparent political correctness becoming commonplace (see the Twitter hashtag #notmydoctor). Whittaker and Chibnall were forced to defend the show against these claims before this series began: Whittaker reminded viewers that there’s “still racism within our current society”, and Chibnall added that “the Doctor and the show are beacons of compassion and empathy”.
Continue reading...Judge threatens to revoke Harvey Weinstein’s bail over phone use in court
Judge furious with Weinstein for using phone in courtroom, where mogul is standing trial on five counts of serious sexual offences
The second day of Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in Manhattan kicked off with sparks flying as the judge threatened to slap the movie mogul in jail for using his cellphone in court while defence lawyers protested that their client was not receiving a fair and impartial hearing.
Related: Harvey Weinstein hit with new charges in Los Angeles during New York trial
Continue reading...Elizabeth Wurtzel, journalist and author of Prozac Nation, dead at 52
Writer of bestselling memoir about clinical depression died from metastatic breast cancer on Tuesday
Elizabeth Wurtzel, journalist and author of bestselling memoir Prozac Nation, has died at the age of 52.
Writer David Samuels, Wurtzel’s friend since childhood, told the New York Times that Wurtzel had died from metastatic breast cancer in Manhattan on Tuesday. Wurtzel, who tested positively for the BRCA genetic mutation, was an vocal advocate for BRCA testing in her journalism, all the while maintaining a defiant attitude in the face of pity. Writing in the Guardian in 2018, she noted: “I hate it when people say that they are sorry about my cancer. Really? Have they met me? I am not someone that you feel sorry for. I am the original mean girl. I now have stage-four upgrade privileges. I can go right to the front. But it’s always been like this. I am a line-cutter. Which is to say, I was precocious. I was early for history.”
Continue reading...Vivian Suter: the rainforest-dwelling artist who paints with fish glue, dogs and mud
She was ignored for decades, but now Suter has been rediscovered as a pioneering eco-artist. We meet her, and her 97-year-old collagist mum, in the wilds of Guatemala
A large dog romps across a blue and white canvas, leaving a trail of brown paw prints. “Oh well,” shrugs Vivian Suter. “They’re part of the work now. I don’t think anyone will mind.” I realise Bonzo – one of three Alsatian crossbreeds that shadow the artist wherever she goes in her Guatemalan home – has just put the finishing touches to an artwork that will shortly be on public display thousands of miles away.
The painting lies on the floor of her “laager” – a storage barn open to the elements, apart from a metre-high stone wall, which you have to clamber over with the help of a rickety chair. The wall is to guard against mudslides, she explains, gesturing at a ghostly tideline that rings the interior. Most of her works hang from a rack; the piles on the floor are for three upcoming exhibitions in Berlin, London and Madrid. Having just opened a 53-piece installation at Tate Liverpool, Suter is halfway through choosing the 200 works that will feature in her Camden Arts Centre exhibition, which opens next week.
Continue reading...Here’s what could be lost if Trump bombs Iran’s cultural treasures
The US president has warned Iran he will obliterate its cultural sites. Here is our guide to the nation’s jewels, from hilltop citadels to a disco-ball mausoleum
If carried out, Donald Trump’s threat to target “cultural sites” in Iran would put him into an axis of architectural evil alongside the Taliban and Isis, both of which have wreaked similar forms of destruction this century. The Taliban dynamited Afghanistan’s sixth-century Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001; Isis has destroyed mosques, shrines and other structures across Iraq and Syria since 2014, some in the ancient city of Palmyra. Not, you might have thought, company the US president would prefer to be associated with.
Does Trump know what would be lost? Probably not – but he’s hardly the only one. The fact that the country is rarely visited by western tourists is not due to a lack of attractions. With a civilisation dating back 5,000 years, and over 20 Unesco world heritage sites, Iran’s cultural heritage is rich and unique, especially its religious architecture, which displays a mastery of geometry, abstract design and pre-industrial engineering practically unparalleled in civilisation. This is is not just Iran’s cultural heritage, it is humanity’s.
Continue reading...John Baldessari, US conceptual artist with a sense of humour, dies aged 88
Baldessari saw his work, juxtaposing painting, text, video, sculpture and more, as a counter to the world’s po-facedness
John Baldessari, the Californian conceptual artist known for his witty and provocative image-making, has died aged 88.
Baldessari was known for countering what he saw as a po-faced conceptual art scene with colour and humour. He once videoed himself being forced to write lines in a notebook: “I will not make any more boring art.” Such pieces were devised in the 1970s, after Baldessari had grown so disillusioned with his painted works that he took them to a San Diego funeral home and had them incinerated. He called the work The Cremation Project. Baldessari then baked the ashes into cookies and exhibited them at the seminal 1970 show Information at Moma in New York. After this, he felt free to embrace a wider palette beyond painting, working with text, video, photo collage and sculpture, among other forms. Recently, he had turned his attention to the world of emojis, blowing them up on canvases in a playful exploration of one of his key fascinations – the intersection between images and words. “How can you not be interested in emojis?” he told the LA Times in 2017. “They just look so stupid!”
Continue reading...Golden Globes: every TV win was well deserved – apart from Olivia Colman’s
From Fleabag to Succession, it was hard to disagree with most of the TV awards at this year’s Globes. But all Colman did was sit in a chair looking glum
When it comes to television, the Golden Globes have a long history of getting it wrong. Last year it awarded best comedy to The Kominsky Method, for example. The year before that it went to The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Two years before that the HFPA cast its gaze across the comedy landscape and inexplicably decided that nothing was better than Mozart in the Jungle.
With this in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking something went badly wrong at the Golden Globes last night because, well, its winners were our winners too. Best drama? Succession, which came first in the Guardian’s best TV of 2019 poll. Best comedy? Fleabag, which came second. Best miniseries? Chernobyl, which came third. The acting awards lined up nicely with this, too; Succession’s Brian Cox won best drama actor, Phoebe Waller-Bridge won best comedy actress and Stellan Skarsgård won best supporting actor.
Continue reading...Ncuti Gatwa: ‘I’ll say yes to anything’
The breakout star of the cult TV series Sex Education talks about his Rwandan roots, family gossip and coping with overnight success
At the beginning of 2019, Ncuti Gatwa had fewer than 1,000 followers on Instagram. He had filmed Sex Education the previous summer, and by January, it was ready for the world to see. Though it starred big names – Gillian Anderson, Asa Butterfield – on paper the show sounded more like a cult oddity than a smash hit. Butterfield played Otis, a secondary-school student turned sex therapist for his peers in a gaudy world that sat between a John Hughes movie and a Just Seventeen problem page. Gatwa starred as Eric Effiong, Otis’s best friend. Netflix had flown the cast to New York to promote Sex Education, which was released when Gatwa was on the return flight – and his character was a huge hit. When he landed at Heathrow, Gatwa turned on his phone. In the space of several hours, his follower count had gone up… by a couple of hundred thousand.
“It definitely felt exposing,” Gatwa says. He’s sitting in a café in Soho, almost exactly a year after the show changed his life so suddenly. At 27, he is a decade older than Eric, and less flamboyant, though he shares the character’s ebullience. He sounds different, too – his own accent roams Scotland, Rwanda and Tottenham, where he now lives, and his broad laugh ripples across the busy lunchtime crowd.
Continue reading...Terry Gilliam faces backlash after labeling #MeToo a ‘witch-hunt’
Director told the Independent he was ‘tired, as a white male, of being blamed for everything that is wrong with the world’
The director Terry Gilliam has invited renewed backlash after repeating his claim that he is a “black lesbian in transition”, assailing the #MeToo movement as a “witch-hunt” and asserting that some of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged victims are “adults who made choices”.
The website PinkNews offered swift condemnation, calling the 79-year-old’s comments “a feeble attempt to prove that white men are the real victims”.
Continue reading...Rod Stewart charged over alleged altercation at Florida resort
Police report says singer punched a hotel security guard on New Year’s Eve
Sir Rod Stewart has been charged with battery after an alleged scuffle at the entrance to a private New Year’s Eve party for children at a hotel in Palm Beach, Florida.
The altercation is also believed to have involved Stewart’s 39-year-old son, Sean, who is accused of pushing a security guard.
Continue reading...Mystery of Rolling Stones tracks posted briefly on YouTube
Vintage recordings may have been published in attempt to extend copyright protection
A mysterious YouTube account that posted, then hid, a collection of 75 rare and unpublished Rolling Stones recordings may have been a canny attempt to avoid EU copyright laws and keep the tracks out of the public domain on the 50th anniversary of their creation.
Shortly before midnight on 31 December, the YouTube account 69RSTRAX posted a collection of recordings including studio out-takes and live performances to its public page on the video-sharing site, with no commentary or explanation. Hours later, on 1 January, again with no warning, the account made all the videos private.
Continue reading...