Fringe Society CEO says venues could offer concertgoers ‘morning after’ shows or tempt residents who ‘want to hide’
Organisers of Edinburgh fringe events have been urged to be “pretty smart” and capitalise on the decision by Oasis and AC/DC to play gigs in the city midway through the festival.
There was surprise and irritation when it emerged the bands would be staging four concerts at Murrayfield stadium in mid-August when the world’s largest arts festival is in full flow.
Continue reading...The actor and director claims that an Austrian newspaper invented a recent interview with him
Clint Eastwood has released a statement to claim a recent interview with him is a fabrication.
Quotes from an alleged interview with the Oscar-winning actor and director had gone viral over the weekend and were picked up by a number of sites. Yet Eastwood has now said that he never spoke to anyone from German-language Austrian newspaper Kurier.
Continue reading...Emmy award-winning TV, stage and film actor also known for her role in Young Sheldon died of cancer
Valerie Mahaffey, the Emmy-award winning actor known for her roles on Northern Exposure, Desperate Housewives and Young Sheldon, died on Friday. She was 71.
Her husband, actor Joseph Kell, said in a statement to Variety: “I have lost the love of my life, and America has lost one of its most endearing actresses. She will be missed.”
Continue reading...Radiohead frontman makes lengthy statement after he had been criticised over perceived silence on the war, and for previously performing in Israel
After he was criticised for his silence on the subject, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has made a statement regarding the war in Gaza, saying Benjamin Netanyahu and his Israeli administration are “extremists” who “need to be stopped”.
He also criticised Hamas, saying the organisation “chooses too to hide behind the suffering of its people”.
I think Netanyahu and his crew of extremists are totally out of control and need to be stopped, and that the international community should put all the pressure it can on them to cease. Their excuse of self-defence has long since worn thin and has been replaced by a transparent desire to take control of Gaza and the West Bank permanently.
I believe this ultra-nationalist administration has hidden itself behind a terrified & grieving people and used them to deflect any criticism, using that fear and grief to further their ultra-nationalist agenda with terrible consequences, as we see now with the horrific blockade of aid to Gaza …
Continue reading...Image on street incorporates shadow of a bollard alongside words ‘I want to be what you saw in me’
Banksy has posted an image of a new artwork that appears to be in Marseille, in southern France, though its exact location has not been confirmed.
The characteristic image, posted on the artist’s Instagram account, transforms the shadow of a street bollard into the form of a lighthouse. Stencilled across it are the words “I want to be what you saw in me”.
Continue reading...Director, composer and actor appeared at event in Clarksdale attended by hundreds after community petition
Hundreds of people packed inside a local auditorium on Thursday to see the hit film Sinners, set in their community and steeped in Mississippi Delta culture.
The special screening of the blockbuster horror film included an appearance by director Ryan Coogler and was made possible by a community petition.
Continue reading...Kenyan writer’s death announced by his daughter, who wrote: ‘He lived a full life, fought a good fight’
The Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who was censored, imprisoned and forced into exile by the dictator Daniel arap Moi, a perennial contender for the Nobel prize for literature and one of few writers working in an indigenous African language, has died aged 87.
“It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our dad, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, this Wednesday morning,” wrote his daughter Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ on Facebook. “He lived a full life, fought a good fight.”
Continue reading...Caleb Followill says shattered heel needed ‘significant emergency surgery’, which would stop him performing
The Kings of Leon frontman, Caleb Followill, has announced that the band have cancelled their UK and European shows this summer after he injured his foot in a “freak accident”.
The singer, who is part of the US rock group with his brothers Nathan and Jared Followill and cousin Matthew Followill, was scheduled to perform at Blackweir Fields, Cardiff and Lancashire’s Lytham festival over the next two months.
Continue reading...Letter also signed by Hanif Kureishi and Russell T Davies urges ceasefire and unrestricted distribution of aid
Three hundred and eighty writers and organisations including Zadie Smith, Ian McEwan, Russell T Davies, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell-Boyce and George Monbiot have signed a letter stating that the Israeli government’s war in Gaza is genocidal and calling for an immediate ceasefire.
“The use of the words ‘genocide’ or ‘acts of genocide’ to describe what is happening in Gaza is no longer debated by international legal experts or human rights organizations,” reads the letter, which was also signed by William Dalrymple, Jeanette Winterson, Brian Eno, Kate Mosse, Irvine Welsh and Elif Shafak.
Continue reading...Chronicle of the Years of Fire took the prize in 1975 for its portrayal of the Algerian war of independence, drawing on his own traumatic history
Mohammed Lakhdar-Hamina, the first Arab and African director to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival, has died aged 91, his family said Friday.
The film-maker was awarded the prize in 1975 for Chronicle of the Years of Fire, a historical drama about the Algerian war of independence.
Continue reading...South African actor gained international recognition for his role in the drama which won best foreign language film
Presley Chweneyagae, the South African actor who gained international recognition for his leading role in the 2005 film Tsotsi, which won South Africa’s first ever Oscar for best foreign language film, has died. He was 40 years old.
His talent agency MLA on Tuesday confirmed Chweneyagae’s death and said South Africa had lost one of its “most gifted and beloved actors”.
Continue reading...Just $1.75m spent on genre across free-to-air networks as advocates warn of ‘broader erosion’ of cultural investment
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Australian commercial television networks have all but given up on creating local children’s drama, advocates say, with just $1.75m spent on the genre across all commercial free-to-air networks in 2023-24.
But that’s $1.75m more than the previous year, according to the latest report card by the communications regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma).
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Continue reading...The director of It Was Just an Accident was cheered by supporters as he arrived back in his home country, where his work has previously landed him in jail
Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was given a hero’s welcome on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed.
After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the film festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d’Or for his latest movie It Was Just an Accident.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, coming to West End, imagines rival dramatists working together
A Guardian report on William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe being literary rivals and collaborators has inspired a play that will be staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in London’s West End this summer.
The RSC’s co-artistic director Daniel Evans will direct Born With Teeth by Liz Duffy Adams, an Irish-American playwright, who has imagined two of the greatest dramatists of all time working together, wrestling creatively, both envious and admiring of each other.
Continue reading...The German-French documentarian, who fled the Nazis twice as a child, spent his career exploring wartime atrocities and conflicts around the world
Marcel Ophuls, the Oscar-winning French film-maker whose documentary The Sorrow and the Pity uncovered the truth of the Vichy government’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during the second world war, has died aged 97.
Ophuls “died peacefully” on Saturday, his grandson Andreas-Benjamin Seyfert confirmed on Monday.
Continue reading...Differing interpretations of public access rights are at heart of Brockwell case pitting campaign group against festival fans
Public parks have been a cherished part of British life since the 19th century; for the Victorians they represented a “commitment to cultivate public good within the public realm”.
But differing interpretations of this vision for municipal green space are at the heart of a debate over a very 21st-century issue: music festivals.
Continue reading...The drop in productions is causing alarm – can Tinseltown halt the exodus and reclaim its spot as the home of movie-making?
When Adam Scott was working on the hit TV show Parks and Recreation in the early 2010s, the Los Angeles studio where the show was filmed was packed – “every stage was filled and working”.
These days, he told his former co-star Rob Lowe in a much-discussed recent podcast conversation, “it’s quiet over there” – in part because “it’s just too expensive to shoot here”.
Continue reading...Brazilian photographer’s work highlighted injustice and introduced rainforest to the world
The Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who is best known for his dramatic black-and-white photographs that highlighted injustice and introduced the Amazon rainforest the world, has died. He was 81.
His death was confirmed by the Instituto Terra, the environmental restoration non-profit he founded with his wife of six decades, Lélia Wanick Salgado. In a post on Instagram, the institute described Salgado as “much more than one of the greatest photographers of our time”.
Continue reading...Post on the pair’s Instagram page says ‘Eva returned to the future today’, having died at their home in Berlin after surgery on her spine
Eva, one half of the pioneering German performance art duo Eva & Adele, has died, her partner has announced.
“Eva returned to the future today,” a post on the pair’s Instagram page said on Wednesday. “She has left this world and stepped on to the eternal stage. Her faith in the power of art was never-ending.”
Continue reading...Director says his fifth movie with the actor will probably be their last project together as Washington ‘has been talking about retirement’
The collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington has spanned four decades and tackled many aspects of African American life. But Lee feels their latest venture, the kidnap drama Highest 2 Lowest, will probably be the duo’s swansong.
“This is the fifth one we’ve done together,” Lee said after the picture’s premiere at the Cannes film festival. “It has been a blessing, this body of work between us, doing films that people love. And I think this is it. He’s been talking about retirement. But five films together: that’s good, they stand up.”
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