Category Archives: Culture

Ctrl Alt Delete: the pro-choice comedy that’s the bravest TV show in America

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They have been called ‘worse than Nazis’ for their abortion-clinic comedy. But for Roni Geva and Margaret Katch, the hate pales beside the outpouring of gratitude

The makers of Ctrl Alt Delete like to say it’s a typical workplace comedy. “But not your typical workplace,” says co-creator Roni Geva. “Do you come here often?” jokes a woman in the abortion clinic waiting room in the first episode, and from that moment they’re off – in short snappy episodes, the laughs come fast in this pro-choice comedy.

At a time when the debate around abortion in the US is reaching vitriolic and absurd levels – see last month when President Trump said women were giving birth and then deciding, with their doctor, whether to “execute” the baby, and the number of states seeking to restrict abortions, including Alabama’s ban last week – it seems right for a different, more humorous and human, approach.

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Shen Wei’s best photograph: a naked self-portrait on a Chinese stage

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‘Not knowing if anyone would walk in gave me energy and inspired my powerful stance’

On a trip through Jiangxi province in south-east China two years ago, my friend and I were wandering around one of the area’s many small villages. It was tiny and empty apart from a few old men and women sitting in front of their houses.

There was a single street which all the doors of the village opened on to. One had a normal black door with a sign above it that said something like “club” or “meeting hall”. It was the only indication of it being non-residential, so I pushed it open. We found an empty theatre with two raised stages. Chairs were stacked on one and on the other was this set: two chairs and a table, draped in red fabric. I instantly knew I had to take a photograph.

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Iron Maiden sue video game company for $2m over Ion Maiden game

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Band argue that game ‘is attempting to trade off on Iron Maiden’s notoriety’ and is confusing customers

Iron Maiden are suing video game company 3D Realms over the game Ion Maiden, which they describe as an “incredibly blatant” infringement on their trademark.

The lawsuit, which demands $2m (£1.58m) in damages, argues that the game’s title will cause “confusion among consumers”, “is nearly identical to the Iron Maiden trademark in appearance, sound and overall commercial impression”, and “is attempting to trade off on Iron Maiden’s notoriety”.

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Italy’s new ruins: heritage sites being lost to neglect and looting

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Overgrown and weathered, many historical monuments are disappearing as public funds for culture fail to match modern Italy’s inheritance

Legend has it that the grotto hidden among the craggy cliffs on San Marco hill in Sutera in the heart of Sicily holds a treasure chest full of gold coins. In order to find it, three men must dream simultaneously about the precise place to dig.

Treasure or no treasure, the grotto itself is an archaeological gem, its walls adorned with a multi-coloured Byzantine-esque 16th-century fresco depicting Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Saints Paulinus, Luke, Mark and Matthew.

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Now kids, help us to kill Bin Laden! The dark side of Washington’s spy museum

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The bugged shoes and poison brollies are fun and fascinating. But why are the sections about state-sponsored torture and assassination so uncritical?

Sitting in a glass case, standing out against a backdrop of deep red, there’s an ice axe that still bears a rust mark, the consequence of a bloody fingerprint left on it decades ago. One day in 1940, this axe was hidden inside Ramón Mercader’s suit jacket, suspended by a string, as he walked into the office of Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary living in exile in Mexico, having been sentenced to death as an “enemy of the people” in his home country.

Mercader slipped behind Trotsky’s desk and brought the axe down with tremendous force, penetrating two-and-three-quarter inches into his skull. Trotsky died 26 hours later. Mercader served 20 years in prison then returned to a hero’s welcome in Moscow. On his deathbed in 1978, his last words were: “I hear it always. I hear the scream. I know he’s waiting for me on the other side.”

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Novelist Pat Barker hits out at ‘fashionable’ diversity schemes

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Prize-winning author says she distrusts post-Brexit interest in regional and working-class voices

The Man Booker prize-winning author Pat Barker says she “distrusts” London publishing’s recent burst in diversity initiatives, calling the rise in interest in regional and working-class voices a “fashionable” move motivated by fear after the Brexit referendum.

Speaking at the Hay festival on Sunday, the Durham author said she had observed an increased appetite for authors based outside London, or from working-class and minority ethnic backgrounds, over the last three years.

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Women are happier without children or a spouse, says happiness expert

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Behavioural scientist Paul Dolan says traditional markers of success no longer apply

We may have suspected it already, but now the science backs it up: unmarried and childless women are the happiest sub-group in the population. And they are more likely to live longer than their married and child-rearing peers, according to a leading expert in happiness.

Speaking at the Hay festival on Saturday, Paul Dolan, a professor of behavioural science at the London School of Economics, said the latest evidence showed that the traditional markers used to measure success did not correlate with happiness – particularly marriage and raising children.

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Naomi Wolf admits blunder over Victorians and sodomy executions

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Death sentences in 1800s were hardly ever carried out, despite claim in author’s book Outrages

It was only published this week, but already the writer Naomi Wolf has admitted an error at the heart of her latest book. Instead of being “actually executed for sodomy” in 1859, as the writer claims in Outrages, Thomas Silver was apparently “paroled two years after being convicted”.

Silver, who was 14 when he was convicted, is just one of several cases cited in the book but, according to the writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, the error stems from a simple misreading of a historical record and raises wider questions about the argument Wolf puts forward.

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It Must Be Heaven review – Palestine’s holy fool lives the dream

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The latest satire-fable from Elia Suleiman is as droll as ever, but while there’s a kernel of seriousness here it too often lapses into elusive mannerism

The Palestinian film-maker Elia Suleiman, dishevelled yet dapper at all times and never without his hat, saunters across continents in this new movie, fixing the amusingly surreal tableau scenes he comes across with a mildly perplexed gaze. He doesn’t talk and smiles just once, when a tiny little bird (a digital creation) flies into his hotel room and drinks water from a cup while is working at his laptop. Suleiman is the holy fool who is no fool.

The premise for this film that he is playing himself: travelling abroad from Nazareth, coming first to Paris and then to New York, trying to speak to producers about getting his latest film made. (In real life, he must surely be more diplomatic and persuasive than his alter ego here, the Suleiman who maintains an enigmatically satirical silence in the face of one producer’s obtuse idiocy.) Everywhere he looks, often in eerily deserted streets – surely Suleiman was shooting on very early summer mornings – he finds scenes of choreographed absurdism, gently but pointedly ridiculing the pomposity of uniformed officialdom. The title itself sounds like some lost Talking Heads track describing a place where things happen in a dream.

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Guardian spurs media outlets to consider stronger climate language

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Use of terms ‘climate crisis’ and ‘global heating’ prompts reviews in other newsrooms

The Guardian’s decision to alter its style guide to better convey the environmental crises unfolding around the world has prompted some other media outlets to reconsider the terms they use in their own coverage.

After the Guardian announced it would now routinely use the words “climate emergency, crisis or breakdown” instead of “climate change”, a memo was sent by the standards editor of CBC, Canada’s national public broadcaster, to staff acknowledging that a “recent shift in style at the British newspaper the Guardian has prompted requests to review the language we use in global warming coverage”.

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I wrote my first book at 75. At the age of 81 and 10 books later, I’m having the time of my life | Susan Moore Jordan

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I had a rich, happy life as a musician. But remembering the murder of my friend’s parents in 1954 led to a novel

We all enjoy “milestone” birthdays. At 16, we’re old enough to drive. Then soon after we’re old enough to drink (legally). Then we start marking decades, and 50 is a biggie: a half-century. But for me, the greatest milestone birthday of all was when I hit three-quarters of a century. At the age of 75 I wrote and published my first book, and here I am six years later working on book number 11, and loving this new passion I’ve discovered.

What makes this even more remarkable is that for my entire life I had a rich, happy life as a musician (student/teacher/performer/stage director). Music was my discipline from a very young age. Reading was a hobby, and I probably had a vague thought about “writing something someday”.

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Matthias & Maxime review – Xavier Dolan’s heartfelt tale of male longing

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Two friends’ playful kiss rekindles suppressed feelings in a film swept along by rattling dialogue and simmering tensions

Xavier Dolan’s unstoppably garrulous, sweet-natured new movie is a coming-of-age film, or possibly an approaching-thirtysomethinghood film. Or perhaps it’s a portrait of a bunch of friends for whom things would never be the same again after that summer. It is not exactly a sexual awakening tale because the sexuality in question never really went to sleep. But it is a love story.

Related: Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood review - Tarantino's dazzling LA redemption song

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Judith Kerr, beloved author of The Tiger Who Came to Tea, dies aged 95

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Writer and illustrator of more than 30 books, including the Mog series based on her pet cats, arrived in England in 1936 as a refugee from the Nazis

Judith Kerr, the author and illustrator whose debut picture book The Tiger Who Came to Tea introduced generations of pre-school children to the joyful chaos of uncontrolled appetites, died at home yesterday at the age of 95 after a short illness, her publisher said on Thursday.

Kerr, who dreamed up the tiger to amuse her two children, only started publishing in her 40s, and lived to see the Tiger reach its millionth sale as she turned 94. To her mild chagrin, it remained her best loved single book: “I’ve got better at drawing, obviously,” she told one interviewer.

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Russian broadcaster hits out at BBC show parodying Putin

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Tonight With Vladimir Putin portrays Russian president as a talkshow host

Russia’s government-owned news service RT has denounced a BBC comedy chatshow featuring a 3D animation of Vladimir Putin interviewing the likes of Alastair Campbell.

The BBC described Tonight With Vladimir Putin, which has yet to air, as a “television first” with new technology enabling a “3D digital cartoon of Putin to walk around and sit behind the desk, interviewing real human guests in front of a studio audience, all in real time.”

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‘I even loved his Twankey’: Dench, Hopkins, Mirren and more on Ian McKellen at 80

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Wild parties, stunning performances, silhouette erections and marrying Patrick Stewart twice. As the actor turns 80, friends including Derek Jacobi, Janet Suzman, Michael Sheen, Bill Condon and Stephen Fry pay tribute

Ian has been been very important in my life, even before we became good friends. When I was a young teen I remember watching Walter on the TV and being hugely affected by it. Then at Rada in the early 90s, I finally saw him live, in Richard III at the National. I was blown away. I remember him doing the opening speech while lighting a cigarette one-handed. It was brilliant, so understated. It exemplified his mastery – and his work ethic. To do something so difficult and complicated and make it look so easy. Ian has an innate sense of theatrical audacity, something I think he shares with Olivier. They both did things that would make the audience gasp self-consciously.

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Binyavanga Wainaina, Kenyan author and gay rights activist, dies aged 48

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One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists died on Tuesday after an illness

One of Africa’s best-known authors and gay rights activists, Binyavanga Wainaina, has died at the age of 48.

The Kenyan author died on Tuesday night in Nairobi after a short illness, the BBC reported. His death was confirmed by Tom Maliti, the chairman of the Kwani Trust, which Wainaina founded.

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Headless self-portraits from a face everyone knew – Luchita Hurtado review

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Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London
Marcel Duchamp massaged her feet and Leonora Carrington built her kids a house. But the work of the 98-year-old Venezuela-born painter is every bit as extraordinary as her life

For a period while living in Chile with her artist-husband Lee Mullican in the late 1960s, Luchita Hurtado painted inside a walk-in closet, standing there and looking down over her breasts and belly to her feet and the floor below. Sometimes a bar of light came in through the slats of the door. She included this in her painting, too. She looks down at the rug, or into a woven basket, that streak of light picking out the weave of the basket, momentarily brightening the pattern on the Navajo rug.

In one painting she drops a strawberry into a bowl on the floor. It hangs in mid-air in the half-lit gloom. Sometimes there seem to be two, three or even four people in there: eight feet on a gorgeous rug, green apples big as bowling balls, inexplicably huge and vivid against the dyed lozenges of the rug, every nub in the rug’s structure picked-out in paint. The painting evokes the feel of the rough texture against naked feet. In another it is all flat zigzags and pattern, interrupted by naked mellow skin.

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Man Booker International prize: Jokha Alharthi wins for Celestial Bodies

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First female Omani novelist to be translated into English shares £50,000 prize with translator Marilyn Booth – the first time an Arabic book has won

Jokha Alharthi, the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, has won the Man Booker International prize for her novel Celestial Bodies.

Alharthi, the £50,000 award’s first winner to write in Arabic, shares the prize equally with her translator, American academic Marilyn Booth. Celestial Bodies is set in the Omani village of al-Awafi and follows the stories of three sisters: Mayya, who marries into a rich family after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries for duty; and Khawla, waiting for a man who has emigrated to Canada.

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Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood review – Tarantino’s dazzling LA redemption song

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With Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt playing a TV actor and stuntman who cross paths with the Manson cult, Tarantino has created outrageous, disorientating entertainment

Quentin Tarantino’s exploitation black-comedy thriller Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood finds a pulp-fictionally redemptive take on the Manson nightmare in late-60s California: a B-movie loser’s state of grace.

It’s shocking, gripping, dazzlingly shot in the celluloid-primary colours of sky blue and sunset gold: colours with the warmth that Mama Cass sang about. The Los Angeles of 1969 is recovered with all Tarantino’s habitual intensity and delirious, hysterical connoisseurship of pop culture detail. But there’s something new here: not just erotic cinephilia, but TV-philia, an intense awareness of the small screen background to everyone’s lives. Opinions are going to divide about this film’s startling and spectacularly provocative ending, which Tarantino is concerned to keep secret and which I have no intention of revealing here. But certainly any ostensible error of taste is nothing like, say, those in the much admired Inglourious Basterds. And maybe worrying about taste is to miss the point of this bizarre Jacobean horror fantasy.

Quite simply, I just defy anyone with red blood in their veins not to respond to the crazy bravura of Tarantino’s film-making, not to be bounced around the auditorium at the moment-by-moment enjoyment that this movie delivers – and conversely, of course, to shudder at the horror and cruelty and its hallucinatory aftermath.

Our first non-hero is Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, a failing cowboy actor and alcoholic going to seed in the autumn of his career and in moments of bad temper beginning to resemble Jack Black. His best friend – pathetically, his only friend – is Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt in his Ocean’s-Eleven mode of easygoing competence and imperturbability. Cliff is Rick’s stunt double and has an awful secret in his life: a grisly event for which he may or may not be guilty. Cliff has to drive Rick everywhere because he has lost his licence, and he is Rick’s best pal, assistant, factotum, and the person who has to straighten Rick when he bursts into boozy tears of self-pity.

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