Singer appeals to fans for help in escalation of feud with Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta
Taylor Swift’s performance at the American music awards is in doubt, as is the future of a new Netflix documentary about her, the singer has claimed, thanks to an ongoing feud with “tyrannical” music managers Scooter Braun and Scott Borchetta.
Related: Taylor Swift returns to US court after appeal over copyright lawsuit
Continue reading...It is one of Earth’s biggest carbon emitters, a place where SUVs roar from manmade islands to malls with ski slopes. Can an architecture triennial in the UAE really teach us how to go green?
A perfectly manicured lawn lines either side of the eight-lane highway leading into the Gulf city of Sharjah. Punctuated by rows of palm trees and pink-blossomed flowerbeds, it is a lush, implausible vision, sustained by a constant mist of sprinklers beneath the scorching sun. Beyond the green ribbon, expansive gated villas sprout from the sand, giving way to mirrored glass towers, leading to a reconstructed “old town”, where air conditioning is pumped into the alleys of an open-air souk.
It’s not hard to see how the United Arab Emirates, of which Sharjah is the third largest city-state after Abu Dhabi and Dubai, is one of the highest emitters of carbon dioxide and consumers of water per capita in the world. It is a place where souped-up SUVs roar from man-made islands to malls with indoor ski slopes, where water is flushed by the gallon into ornamental gardens, where energy is guzzled with end-of-the-world glee, deaf to the pleas of Greta Thunberg. But before you start sneering, this petroleum-fuelled, water-hungry lifestyle is mostly the doing of British and American conglomerates, the result of an Anglo-centric idea of a city imposed on a desert climate that could never sustain it.
Continue reading...Performance artist Dread Scott recreates the largely untold story of the 1811 slave rebellion in southern Louisiana. Winding through old plantation country, petrochemical plants and the city of New Orleans, the Guardian followed re-enactors along the route
Continue reading...The former M*A*S*H star has Parkinson’s disease – but remains optimistic. He talks about his new film, Marriage Story, how actors can help heal political division and working with Woody Allen
‘Would you like a beer?” asks Alan Alda, tall and elegant in black raincoat, grey jacket and blue jeans as he walks through his offices near the Lincoln Center in New York. The actor, director and science communicator warmly greets Einstein, a female half bernese mountain dog, half border collie. “Smartest dog I ever met,” Alda’s assistant later observes.
The urbane 83-year-old star of M*A*S*H, The West Wing and The Aviator settles in a glass-walled meeting room, acknowledges that we are here to talk about his new film, Marriage Story, but says he is happy to talk about anything. Over the next hour, he will discuss God, mortality, his mother, podcasting, science, Woody Allen and how he is, so far, unbowed by Parkinson’s disease.
Continue reading...The new streaming service has added the disclaimer to some of its best-known movies, including Dumbo and Lady and the Tramp
Warnings have been added to a number of classic Disney films playing on the recently launched Disney+ streaming service that they may contain “outdated cultural depictions”.
Users of the service have seen the warnings attached to some of the company’s best-known animated films, such as Dumbo, Peter Pan and Lady and the Tramp, with text that reads: “This program is presented as originally created. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”
Continue reading...Amount exceeds estimate amid growing interest in female baroque painter’s work
A newly discovered canvas by the female 17th-century Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi sold for almost €4.8m (£4.1m) on Wednesday, a record for the artist, auction house Artcurial said.
The sale came amid a surge of interest in the rare female baroque painter’s extraordinarily dramatic work and easily exceeded the base estimate of between €600,000 and €800,000.
Continue reading...Artist becomes first African to win the prestigious prize, for embroidered pictures created following terrorist attack
• See a photo essay of the Prix Pictet 2019 shortlist
Joana Choumali, a 45-year-old photographer from Ivory Coast, has become the first African artist to win the Prix Pictet. The announcement was made this evening in a ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London for the opening of an exhibition of the 12 shortlisted artists.
The theme of the eighth Prix Pictet, a global award for photography and sustainability, was Hope. The jury, which included last year’s winner, Richard Mosse, praised Choumali’s “brilliantly original meditation on the ability of the human spirit to wrest hope and resilience from even the most traumatic events”.
Continue reading...There’s intermittent fun to be had in this throwaway relaunch of the female secret agent franchise but the party is cut short by incoherent action and a clunky script
Back in 2000, the glossy relaunch of Charlie’s Angels felt like a genuine pop culture event. The central casting of Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu, all at the height of their fame, was an impressively inspired get. The accompanying lead single from Destiny’s Child was not only a smash hit but a deserved one. The gaudy aesthetic and post-Matrix bullet time action were laughable but also undeniably of the moment. It was the most 2000 film released in 2000, and at the time it was impossible to avoid – a slick, pre-packaged blockbuster received with as much enthusiasm as it was made. Almost 20 years, one sequel and one failed TV series later, the franchise is back, but all that buzz has been replaced with something else: deafening silence.
Related: Elizabeth Banks: ‘My film is loaded with sneaky feminist ideas’
Continue reading...Ghostly remains of ‘Maid of Harlech’ occasionally visible in the sand
The skeletal remains of an American fighter plane that crashed during the second world war off the Welsh coast, and occasionally emerge ghost-like from the seabed, have been given protected status.
Welsh government officials say the resting place of the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, nicknamed the Maid of Harlech, is the first military aircraft crash site in the UK to be protected for its historic and archaeological interest.
Continue reading...In 1969, it changed the rules for children’s television and in the years since, it’s continued to innovate and provide groundbreaking inclusivity
On a fall day, 50 years ago, PBS began airing Sesame Street, a show inspired by a question: what if the visual flash and frenetic pace of TV were used to teach kids about letters and numbers instead of about breakfast cereals?
Within a year of its 10 November 1969 debut, Sesame Street was a sensation. Children loved it. Hard-working parents were grateful for it. Critics and academics alike couldn’t stop talking about it – both positively and negatively. Some pundits wondered if a popular series geared toward short attention spans would result in a generation that never learned to focus. Others were suspicious of the show’s secondary mission, to make an educational program that reflected the lives of its audience … from their unspoken anxieties to the color of their skin.
Continue reading...Interviewed about her plans for retirement, the former Aotearoa New Zealand prime minister says the word is not in her vocabulary
Helen Clark, 69, is the second woman to hold the post of prime minister of Aotearoa New Zealand and fifth-longest serving prime minister. She was also the first female head of the United Nations Development Program.
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Continue reading...Conleth Hill jokes ‘there’s no proof’ to claims by co-star Emilia Clarke that he was behind gaffe
The Game Of Thrones actor Conleth Hill has denied being responsible for the show’s coffee cup blunder.
Viewers poked fun at the fantasy epic when a rogue container was spotted on a table during an episode in the final season this year.
Continue reading...From romcoms to Marvel blockbusters, east Asian actors are enjoying unprecedented success. What’s taken the film industry so long?
It was the moment that all romance fans look forward to at the end of a film, hearts bubbling with anticipation: the kiss. I was watching The Edge of Seventeen, a smart coming-of-age movie, in which Nadine (Hailee Steinfeld) had rushed to see her awkwardly endearing classmate (Hayden Szeto). After a bungled date and a crush on another man, she had decided Erwin was the one she wanted.
And then, instead of any show of passion, there came … an affectionate pat on the back as he introduced her to his friends. Moments before, I had been delighted that a Canadian actor of Chinese descent had been cast as the love interest of a white American woman. As the credits rolled, I felt cheated.
Continue reading...Film director denies claim by Valentine Monnier about alleged incident at ski resort
A Frenchwoman has accused Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski of raping her in a Swiss ski resort when she was a teenager.
It is the latest accusation against the Polish-born director who fled from the US to France in 1978 after admitting the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl.
Continue reading...A war of words on The View showed the president’s opponents falling straight into his son’s trap
Last night, ABC’s The View invited Donald Trump Jr on as a guest – because having just one child of a famous politician on the show is not enough (the co-host Meghan McCain is the daughter of the late senator John McCain). They also invited Trump Jr’s girlfriend – because in today’s political landscape, even the most tenuous link to fame or power seems as good a credential as any for being worthy of a platform.
It wasn’t long before the chatshow descended into chaos. Soon, McCain and Trump Jr were in a very contentious battle over whose dad was bigger than whose – McCain pointing out that Trump said mean things about her dad; Trump Jr pointing out that his dad had Made America Great Again.
Continue reading...Traumatised by her legal struggles with producer Dr Luke, the once hedonistic pop star felt she didn’t deserve to be happy. But now she is back with a new album – and ready to party again
I’ve never forgotten the first time I saw Kesha. It was at T in the Park 2011, an otherwise unmemorable weekend festival in Scotland. During her main-stage performance, the woman then known as Ke$ha told the crowd that she had one pressing question. “Is there,” she said, prolonging the anticipation, “enough glitter on my titties?” The noisy consensus was no, there was not, so her accomplices doused her in a can of lager and an explosion of gold that left her looking like the daughter of C-3PO and Dolly Parton.
These gleeful exploits defined Kesha Rose Sebert as a pop star for a while. She followed her defiantly trashy 2010 debut, Animal, with the equally riotous Warrior in 2012, becoming a trailblazer for hedonistic pop. Then she disappeared. In 2016, a new image emerged: Kesha wearing a white suit, sobbing in court as she tried to escape her contract with the producer Dr Luke (AKA Lukasz Gottwald), whom she accused of sexual and emotional abuse including date rape and bullying that led to her developing an eating disorder. He denied the allegations. Her case was dismissed. While she could pick new collaborators, she still had to record for his label, an imprint of Sony, and he countersued for defamation.
Continue reading...Tunnel to East Berlin filled in by Stasi is excavated and opened to public for first time
A tunnel built under the Berlin Wall to allow dozens of East Germans to escape to freedom has been exposed for the first time in almost half a century.
Hundreds of volunteers, including some of the original tunnellers, dug up 189 cubic metres of earth beneath a 19th century brewery to allow access to the former escape route. It will open to the public on Monday as part of celebrations to mark 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Continue reading...The new streaming service may offer the best British dramas in TV history – but it seems hamstrung from the start. We dig into its offering to spare you the bother ... and another subscription
One of the best offerings on BritBox – the new archive streaming site officially launched by ITV and the BBC today – is arguably the greatest single-series British TV drama ever made: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the 1979 BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s espionage novel.
But the opening of another digital bank of programming will confront even the most assiduous viewer with a new parody of the children’s counting song – Netflix, Amazon, Apple, BritBox, Disney, Why?
Continue reading...A search for the mysterious author of a counterculture classic led to someone else entirely. Or did it? By Emmanuel Carrère
Toward the end of the 1960s, Luke Rhinehart worked as a psychoanalyst in New York and was bored stiff. He lived in a pretty apartment with a nice view. He practised yoga, read books on Zen, dreamed vaguely of joining a commune but did not dare. As a therapist, he was resolutely nondirective. If a patient who still had not lost his virginity was plagued by sadistic impulses and said on Rhinehart’s couch that he would like to rape and kill a little girl, his professional ethics obliged him to repeat with a calm voice: “You’d like to rape and kill a little girl?” No judgment. But what he wanted to say was: “Well, go ahead, then! If what really turns you on is raping and killing a little girl, then stop boring me with this fantasy. Do it!”
He checked himself before coming out with such monstrosities, but they obsessed him more and more. His own fantasies were nothing extreme – not enough to get him sent to prison – but like everyone else, he stopped himself going through with them. What Luke would have liked, for example, was to sleep with Arlene, the wife of his colleague Jake Ecstein, who lived across the landing. But as a faithful husband, he let the idea simmer away in the back of his mind.
Continue reading...Star accuses Christophe Ruggia of abuse when she was making her first film aged 12
The acclaimed French actor Adèle Haenel has alleged she was sexually harassed from the age of 12 by the director who made her first film.
Haenel, 30, who has won a string of awards for her work, including two French Oscars, said she was subjected to “permanent sexual harassment” by Christophe Ruggia from the age of 12 to 15 when she was making and promoting her debut 2002 film, The Devils, in which she played a girl with autism.
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