Category Archives: Culture

Disney+ attaches warnings of ‘outdated cultural depictions’ to classic films

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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to a number of classic Disney films playing on the recently launched Disney+ streaming service that they may contain “outdated cultural depictions”.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 It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”

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Artemisia Gentileschi’s painting Lucretia sells for almost €4.8m

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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.

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Joana Choumali wins 2019 Prix Prictet photography prize

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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”.

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Charlie’s Angels review – ramshackle action reboot goes at half throttle

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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’

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WW2 wreck of fighter plane off Welsh coast gets protected status

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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.

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‘We know we’re more than a TV show’: how Sesame Street made it to 50

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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.

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Helen Clark: ‘I’d like to think I was ahead of my time’

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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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Game Of Thrones star denies responsibility for coffee cup blunder

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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.

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The new heart-throbs: how Hollywood embraced east Asian actors, from Henry Golding to Simu Liu

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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.

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Woman accuses Roman Polanski of raping her in 1975 when she was 18

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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.

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Donald Trump Jr wants to trigger and expose liberals, and they’re letting him | Poppy Noor

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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.

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Kesha: ‘The world’s going to burn up – I might as well have a good time’

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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.

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‘It was gut-wrenching’: Berlin Wall tunneller recalls 1971 capture

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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.

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It’s mission impossible! Why BritBox will never rival Netflix

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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?

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Who is the real Dice Man? The elusive writer behind the disturbing cult novel

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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.

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French actor Adèle Haenel claims director sexually harassed her

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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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Punk persecution: how East Germany cracked down on alternative lifestyles – in pictures

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Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, East Germany’s secret police regarded punks as the most dangerous youth element in the country and ‘the leading force’ behind anti-government activities. These unnamed police mugshots from the former DDR demonstrate the lengths to which the security services would surveil, harass and detain punk ‘adherents’ and ‘sympathisers’.

  • Burning Down the Haus: Punk Rock, Revolution and the Fall of the Berlin Wall by Tim Mohr is published by Dialogue Books



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‘We lay like corpses’: Bangladesh’s 1970s rape camp survivors speak out | Lucy Lamble

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Award-winning documentary Rising Silence preserves the testimony of some of the 200,000 women abducted during the country’s war of independence

In 1971, during the nine-month war that gave Bangladesh its independence from then West Pakistan, four sisters – Amina, Maleka, Mukhlesa and Budhi Begum – were abducted by Pakistani soldiers and local collaborators. They were among the more than 200,000 women held in rape camps and were detained for two and a half months.

“Twenty-two of us would lie like corpses in that room,” says Maleka as she explains how her elder sister Buhdi, “unable to bear the pain”, died before they were released.

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Moving stories: inside the book buses changing children’s lives

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Around the world, mobile library programmes are taking books, educational support and even counselling to communities in serious and urgent need

Every week, two converted blue buses stocked with children’s books carefully navigate the streets of Kabul, avoiding areas where deadly explosions are common. These travelling libraries stop off at schools in different parts of the city, delivering a wealth of reading material directly to youngsters who have limited access to books.

“A lot of schools in our city don’t have access to something as basic as a library,” says Freshta Karim, a 27-year-old Oxford University graduate who was inspired to start Charmaghz, a non-profit, in her home city having grown up without many books herself. “We were trying to understand what we could do to promote critical thinking in our country.”

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British Museum is world’s largest receiver of stolen goods, says QC

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Geoffrey Robertson says it should ‘wash its hands of blood and return Elgin’s loot’

The British Museum has been accused of exhibiting “pilfered cultural property”, by a leading human rights lawyer who is calling for European and US institutions to return treasures taken from “subjugated peoples” by “conquerors or colonial masters”.

Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “The trustees of the British Museum have become the world’s largest receivers of stolen property, and the great majority of their loot is not even on public display.”

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