As the co-founders of Seret, the UK Israeli film and television festival, we are surprised that, yet again, there has been a call for a boycott on screening films from Israel here in the UK, from film-makers who believe that they are supporting the “Palestinian cause” (Letters, 26 April).
Israeli films are distributed globally, and the cinemas they are screened in are delighted and proud to show them to their audiences.
Continue reading...The former enfant terrible of 80s literature is now a self-appointed scourge of victimhood and outrage. He talks about his first book for a decade
Poor Bret Easton Ellis. For someone I imagine to be rather fastidious – years ago, a friend of mine visited his New York apartment, where he was a little surprised to be told not to touch any of its owner’s CDs – this can hardly be the easiest of Monday mornings. For one thing, Virgin Atlantic has lost his luggage. Ahead of my arrival at his pristine London hotel, he had to dash out to buy deodorant; his black tracksuit bottoms are faintly marked with a stain that may (or may not) be airline toothpaste. For another, I have an absolutely stinking cold. In the bar where we’re to talk – it’s called the Punch Room, which is appropriate, given the territory covered by his new book – he sits down, not at my table, but at the one next to it, which makes us both laugh. Is he really going to stay all the way over there? “Well,” he says, faux sheepish. “I’m so susceptible to these things, and I am on a book tour.” Reluctantly, he inches towards me.
Still, he is such a good sport. His manner is warm, and his face – pinker and heavier now than at the height of his literary fame, and topped with hair that is silver – bears a near-permanent smile. He talks and talks; he doesn’t watch his words; he is frequently very funny and sometimes a touch scabrous. All of which makes me wonder about the way he is treated both by some journalists and on social media. In the days before our meeting, I read a review of his new book that was so gratuitously spiteful, it fairly took the breath away. I also read an interview on the New Yorker website, one that had done brisk business on Twitter, causing indignation, outrage and glee wherever it appeared. People were saying that it dispatched the supposedly beyond-the-pale Ellis satisfyingly, and with utmost appropriateness. But it seemed to me to be mostly an exercise in baiting, interruption, disingenuousness and grandstanding on the part of its writer.
Continue reading...Hong Kong-based photographer Michael Wolf is best known for Architecture of Density, which shows the city’s tower blocks as dramatic geometric abstractions, and Tokyo Compression, which captures rush hour on the Japanese capital’s subway. He died this week aged 64
Continue reading...Three-day event makes late move to secret location in wake of row between LGBT and feminist groups
A pornography festival in London this weekend has been forced to relocate after protests.
Faced with the prospect of a picket, organisers of the London porn film festival, which describes itself as “celebrating queer, feminist, radical and experimental porn”, pulled screenings from the Horse Hospital, an arts venue in Bloomsbury. The three-day event will instead be held at a new location disclosed only to ticket holders.
Continue reading...Art dealer who owns a dozen pieces by the street artist is convinced by Marble Arch work
A Banksy collector and expert believes a mural that appeared at Extinction Rebellion’s Marble Arch base overnight is an authentic piece by the Bristolian street artist.
John Brandler, who owns a dozen pieces by Banksy is convinced the artwork – which features the slogan “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin” next to a young girl sitting on the ground holding an Extinction Rebellion logo – is an original because of its execution and theme.
Continue reading...They put a recording studio in a rickety motorhome and crossed 33 countries – asking strangers to knock out a tearjerker
‘People asked us, ‘Are you crackers?’” says Gemma Paintin. She can see why. Along with fellow Bristol artist James Stenhouse, Paintin spent half of 2018 travelling around Europe in an old motorhome, recording love songs. Their epic trek took in almost 20,000 miles, 33 countries, 46 languages and 731 songs – each sung in their battered mobile studio, mostly by random strangers.
These ranged from a seven-year-old Greek boy singing the Kiss song I Was Made for Lovin’ You (“even the guitar parts”) to MEP Peter Simon, who laid down a German folksong. There was a singing security guard in Madrid and some lads in Leeds who bawled through Robbie Williams’s Angels. This, says Paintin, was “exactly how you’d expect a lad version of Angels to sound”.
Continue reading...The star of Hannibal, The Hunt and new film Arctic doubts frank conversation is possible in the wake of #MeToo. But is he really also sceptical about climate change?
Dogme 95, the notorious Danish DIY film movement that launched the career of – among others – Lars Von Trier, has been called a lot of things. “Revolutionary”, “amateur porn”, “shit” (the last one yelled by the critic Mark Kermode at a Cannes screening of Von Trier’s The Idiots). With its 10-point manifesto targeting “decadent film-making”, wobbly-cam aesthetic and tendency towards nudity, violence and cruelty, it has inspired rapture and revulsion in equal measure. Though not everyone, it seems, had such a visceral reaction.
“To be frank, I just thought it was silly,” says Mads Mikkelsen. “Sitting down and writing down 10 commandments of how to approach film-making? ‘The story is important’ – no shit, Sherlock! Seriously? Do you have to write that down? Was it not important before you wrote it down? All these things were common fucking sense to me.
Continue reading...Daniel Craig’s swansong as 007 will see the return of Léa Seydoux, as well as previously-confirmed Rami Malek
Fresh details of plot and cast for the 25th James Bond film have been revealed at an official launch at Ian Fleming’s villa in Jamaica. With the sea in the background, a platter of pears and papaya in front, Bond producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson as well as new director Cary Fukunaga told radio presenter Clara Amfo that the new film opens with Bond relaxing in “his spiritual home”.
“Bond is not on active service,” said Broccoli. “He’s enjoying himself in Jamaica.” The trio confirmed that MI6 regulars Ralph Fiennes (who took over from Judi Dench as M after 2012’s Skyfall), Naomie Harris (as Moneypenny), Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter), Rory Kinnear (as Bill Tanner) and Ben Whishaw (as Q) will return, alongside Léa Seydoux, who played psychologist Madeleine Swann in 2015’s Spectre.
Continue reading...Actor fined for tax evasion returns to spotlight after months of rumours she had fled China or was in prison
The Chinese megastar Fan Bingbing has appeared in public for the first time in almost a year, after a mysterious disappearance from the public eye believed to be linked to charges of tax evasion.
Fan, who is one of China’s highest-profile actors, appeared at a Beijing gala on Monday night in honour of iQiyi, a popular video-streaming platform.
Continue reading...Jacob Wainwright’s diary is only handwritten witness account of missionary’s death
The diary of an African attendant on the Scottish explorer David Livingstone’s final journey into the continent has been published online, containing the only handwritten witness account of the the Victorian missionary’s death in 1873.
The manuscript was written by Jacob Wainwright, a member of the Yao ethnic group from east Africa and the only African pallbearer at the explorer’s funeral in Westminster Abbey in 1874.
Continue reading...The Night Mail takes $50,000 prize and secures funding for an English translation
Lebanese author Hoda Barakat has won the $50,000 (£39,000) International prize for Arabic fiction (Ipaf) for her novel The Night Mail, which tells the stories of people in exile through their letters.
Billed as the “Arabic Booker”, the Ipaf also provides funding to translate the book into English. The Night Mail has already been acquired by UK publisher Oneworld, which will publish the English version in 2020.
Continue reading...Lord of the Rings author’s estate declares it did not ‘approve of, authorise or participate in the making of’ new biopic
The family and estate of JRR Tolkien have fired a broadside against the forthcoming film starring Nicholas Hoult as a young version of the author, saying that they “do not endorse it or its content in any way”.
Out in May, and starring Hoult in the title role and Lily Collins as his wife Edith, Tolkien explores “the formative years of the renowned author’s life as he finds friendship, courage and inspiration among a fellow group of writers and artists at school”. Directed by Dome Karukoski, it promises to reveal how “their brotherhood strengthens as they grow up … until the outbreak of the first world war which threatens to tear their fellowship apart”, all of which, according to studio Fox Searchlight, would inspire Tolkien to “write his famous Middle-earth novels”.
Continue reading...Family of Oscar-nominated film-maker, 51, thanked his fans and colleagues for good wishes
Oscar-nominated director John Singleton is in intensive care after suffering a stroke. The film-maker, known for movies including Boyz N the Hood, the 2000 remake of Shaft and 2 Fast 2 Furious, fell ill on Wednesday, his family said in a statement to the Press Association.
Singleton, 51, is now in hospital “under great medical care”, they said.
Continue reading...The competition to repair the Paris cathedral will attract global interest. Architects give their views
It is less than a week since the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral and the response has swung from global grief at an architectural tragedy, to relief that the damage was not as extensive as it could have been, and on to matters of reconstruction. President Emmanuel Macron has announced that the 13th-century landmark will be rebuilt within five years, “even more beautifully”.
Macron’s words accompanied the announcement of an international competition to design a new spire and roof structure – boosted by €1bn of private donations pledged so far. The prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said they hoped for “a new spire adapted to the techniques and the challenges of our era”.
Continue reading...Defoe’s book has inspired novels, Hollywood movies and games – but the shipwrecked slave-trader should never have become a role model
In February 1719, two months before the publication of Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe proposed in the Weekly Journal that the South Sea Company – founded just eight years earlier to manage the national debt and awarded a contract to supply the Spanish colonies in Latin America with several thousand African slaves per year – should oversee the founding of a British colony at the mouth of the River Orinoco on the coast of present day Venezuela. The government would be required “to furnish six Men of War, and 4000 regular Troops, with some Engineers and 100 pieces of Cannon, and military Stores in Proportion for the maintaining and supporting the Design”, but “the Revenue it shall bring to the Kingdom will be a full amends”. Defoe chose to locate the fictional island on which Crusoe is stranded around 40 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco, and furnish it with a kindlier climate than that of the actual island on which Alexander Selkirk, the presumed model for Crusoe, was marooned. His book (no one was calling it a “novel” at the time) was a prospectus for potential investors, lacking only glossy photos of beaches and palm trees.
Bribery and insider dealing combined with public credulity to drive the share price of the South Sea Company unsustainably high, and in 1720 the bubble burst, causing widespread financial ruin. Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe – which recounts, in addition to Crusoe’s diligent labours on the island, his skirmishes with cannibals and a crew of English mutineers, his rescue and a perilous overland journey from Lisbon to bring home the fortune that has been accumulating during his absence – would have been a better investment. By late summer 1719 the book had been reprinted three times and Defoe had published a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. A third volume, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, followed in 1720. By the end of the 19th century, the original Crusoe had been reissued in several hundred editions and the book had come to resemble, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “one of the anonymous productions of the race rather than the effort of a single mind”. During the 20th century, Defoe’s original template was turned upside down and inside out – by, among many others, HG Wells, Jean Giraudoux, William Golding, JG Ballard and Julio Cortázar – in ways that reflected changing attitudes to race, gender, imperialism, rationality and the environment.
Continue reading...Rai’s proposals to show different content to men and women condemned as sexist
Italian state broadcaster Rai has sparked fury over a proposal to create separate male and female TV channels.
A reorganisation of some of the company’s channels as part of its strategic plan could result in one airing shows and films geared more towards men, and one aimed at women.
Continue reading...DNA research adds to evidence soldiers heading east struck up relationships with locals
Crusader armies were made up of people from remarkably genetically diverse backgrounds, hailing not just from western Europe but also much further east, according to a new study that gives unprecedented insight into the fighters’ lives.
The Crusades to the Holy Land were spread over two centuries, with many Europeans heading east to fight, and others turning up to trade.
Continue reading...The KLF founder will ask citizens if they agree with a clause he proposes adding to the Good Friday agreement
His best-known actions include burning £1m, firing blanks at the 1992 Brit awards and dropping a dead sheep on the red carpet of a luxury hotel as a member of the KLF. But Bill Drummond’s latest public display is more sedate: on Good Friday, he will stand on the Irish border, handing out homemade hot cross buns and conducting an informal referendum.
Between 10am and 12pm on 19 April, Drummond will ask the first 40 people who cross the border between Derry and Donegal whether they agree or disagree with adding a clause of his creation to the Good Friday agreement:
Continue reading...Other schools look to follow after Tàber school takes out one-third of its collection, deeming the books ‘highly stereotypical and sexist’
Several schools across Barcelona are considering purging their libraries of stereotypical and sexist children’s books, after one removed around 200 titles, including Little Red Riding Hood and the story of the legend of Saint George, from its library.
The Tàber school’s infant library of around 600 children’s books was reviewed by the Associació Espai i Lleure as part of a project that aims to highlight hidden sexist content. The group reviewed the characters in each book, whether or not they speak and what roles they perform, finding that 30% of the books were highly sexist, had strong stereotypes and were, in its opinion, of no pedagogical value.
Continue reading...PM says rebuilt cathedral should reflect ‘techniques and challenges of our times’
The French prime minister, Edouard Philippe, has announced an international architecture competition to rebuild the spire of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The 93-metre spire collapsed on Monday in a fire that began at its base and spread through the cathedral’s ribbed roof, made up of hundreds of oak beams, some dating back to the 13th century.
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