The star of a string of successful film musicals was also known for her work as an animal welfare activist
Doris Day, the actor, singer and animal welfare activist, has died at the age of 97. The Doris Day Animal Foundation confirmed the news.
Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, Day was known for a string of successful musicals and romantic comedies, including Pillow Talk, as well as a singing career that encompassed 29 studio albums.
Continue reading...The vessel that became a coffin for hundreds has gone on display at the Venice Biennale. It intends to stir our conscience – but is it a spectacle that exploits disaster?
On the night of 18 April 2015, about 180 kilometres from the Italian island of Lampedusa, a fishing boat capsized with hundreds of migrants on board. Among the waves and beneath the ship’s 23-metre hull, 700 passengers who had dreamed of a better life drowned in the waters of the Mediterranean.
Last week that giant, rusty vessel arrived in Venice on the occasion of the city’s Biennale art festival, where it went on display on Saturday in an installation designed by the artist Christoph Büchel.
Continue reading...Actor shot to fame in the 1960s playing a hippie undercover cop and returning to television with David Lynch’s cult series
Peggy Lipton, a star of the groundbreaking late 1960s TV show The Mod Squad and the 1990s show Twin Peaks, has died of cancer aged 72.
Lipton died surrounded by her family, her daughters, Rashida and Kidada Jones, said in a statement.
Continue reading...Cesar Barron had a heart attack during performance at the Roundhouse in Camden, according to industry reports
A former World Championship Wrestling star wrestler has died after collapsing during a show in London, it is reported.
Silver King – who played a villain called Ramses in the film Nacho Libre alongside Jack Black – was performing at the Roundhouse in Camden at the time.
Continue reading...Each of the 104 pages in Nicolaes Tulp’s book of tulips contains a watercolour painted by the artist Jacob Marrel, with a record of the market values of the bulbs at the height of 17th-century tulip mania, the world’s first speculation bubble.
The catalogue bears testament to a period in the 1630s when the Netherlands was the richest country in the world and single tulip bulbs would sell for more than 10 times the annual income of a skilled worker. However, the market crashed dramatically in 1637.
Continue reading...The best picture Oscar and the Pulitzer for biography have been bestowed on problematic and inferior works on race
Art highlighting the marginalized, blacks, gays and others, is more fashionable than ever. For the gatekeepers of culture, however, it is not authenticity but stories that celebrate a superficial idea of progressiveness which exert the greatest appeal. Narratives exhibiting how “woke” we are resonate most. As long as a work captures how accepting whites are of blacks, how understanding straights are when encountering queerness, success is assured.
Related: Culture’s race war: 'Blackness is something to consume but not engage with'
Continue reading...The Stow horse fair has been held in the Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold biannually, in May and October, for hundreds of years. Gypsy and Traveller people from all over the country have been gathering in the small town for the event since 1476
Continue reading...Political chaos leaves country’s artists playing catch-up just days before art event begins
Switzerland is partying, sequin-clad dancers whirling on a vast screen. Russia is staging an elaborate homage to Rembrandt. But between them – or rather between their national pavilions in the public gardens of Venice – Venezuela is deserted and padlocked shut.
The Venice Biennale, the art world’s most celebrated international event, is due to open to the public on Saturday, and the venues have already thrown open their doors to curators, artists, museum directors, press and collectors. But not Venezuela’s pavilion. Winter leaves are piled up in the courtyard; discarded building materials and rubbish are heaped at the side.
Continue reading...For thousands of people in Benin and Togo, the illegal trade in fuel looted from oil-rich Nigeria offers a lifeline. The human impact of this lucrative dealing has been documented by Spanish photographer Antonio Aragón Renuncio, whose series on the subject – described by the judges as ‘brilliantly affecting’ – won him the 2019 London Business School photography award
Continue reading...Largest collection of international espionage artefacts ever placed on public display illuminate the work of famous spies and their pivotal actions, as well as help bring to life the tradecraft of the women and men behind some of the most secretive missions in world history
Continue reading...Sexual abuse lawsuit reinstated after lawyer argues singer did not reply to legal documents because he is illiterate
R Kelly failed to respond to a lawsuit because he is illiterate, a lawyer for the singer told a judge on Wednesday.
Related: The debate: should Spotify ban R Kelly and Michael Jackson?
Continue reading...In curving galleries designed by David Adjaye, artists are putting Africa firmly on the biennale map
The Venice Art Biennale, the world’s most celebrated international art event, has a history that is inextricably bound up with colonialism.
Its first pavilion for the showcasing of a “national” art was established by Belgium in 1907. Britain followed soon after. European countries remain dominant at the event – at least numerically.
Continue reading...The death of the SNL star 30 years ago robbed the industry of one its finest voices – but not before she had blazed a trail for women such as Tina Fey to follow
There is no shortage of excellent critical writing about the US comedy scene in the 80s, and Nick de Semlyen’s Wild and Crazy Guys, which is published in the UK next month, is a terrific contribution to the genre. De Semlyen frames his book by telling the stories of the men who forged that world, most of whom – including Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd – emerged from the comedy training ground of Saturday Night Live. But what De Semlyen’s book also shows is that this scene was dominated by men. Yet that wasn’t supposed to be the case.
This month is the 30th anniversary of the death of Gilda Radner, one of the original cast members of SNL, alongside Chase, Belushi, Aykroyd and others. Although she is comparatively little known today outside comedy circles, back then she was widely assumed to be the future megastar of that group. With her sharp parodies of celebrities and her skill at satirising her own femininity and neuroses, she set the mould for modern female comedians. Without Radner, it is hard to imagine the existence of many of the most beloved comic characters of the past 30 years, from Elaine Benes in Seinfeld to Liz Lemon in 30 Rock.
Continue reading...From footballs to live fish, delivery mopeds piled high with unwieldy, unlikely goods are one of the Vietnamese capital’s most distinctive sights. As the city plans to ban motorbikes altogether, photographer Jon Enoch captured the drivers at work
Continue reading...Protests expected at song contest over country’s treatment of Palestinians
Israel has said it will block activists who plan to disrupt the Eurovision Song Contest from entering the country, as anxiety mounts that the event, watched by a global TV audience, will become a focus for protests against the country’s treatment of the Palestinians.
The world’s longest-running televised song competition will take place on 14-18 May in the coastal city of Tel Aviv. Contestants have begun to arrive, stage lights have been hung and fresh grass has been laid for a massive party on the seafront.
Continue reading...Reading groups are springing up across Kabul, broadening youthful horizons in a country where books are often censored
In a dimly lit room in west Kabul, stacked with shelves full of books, a small crowd gathers around the warmth of a gas heater. Books clamped under their arms, they are eager to share the stories they’ve read over the course of the week.
Members of Afghanistan’s youngest reading club, the Book Cottage, range in age from four to 13. The club is just one of many reading circles that are springing up across the capital and reviving a book culture that, once lost, is now vibrant, liberal and expanding once again.
Continue reading...Red Cross steps in after temperatures drop below zero at unauthorised electronic music festival
About 30 people have been treated for hypothermia at an outdoor techno music festival in France after unexpected snowfall left many sheltering under survival blankets distributed by the Red Cross.
About 10,000 people attended the unauthorised Teknival 2019 festival in the central Creuse region at the weekend, where temperatures dropped to -3C over Saturday night.
Continue reading...Modern-day cup initially mistaken for a Starbucks mug makes appearance in feast scene, provoking hilarity and anger
It’s a faux-medieval fantasy world of magic, dragons and heroic warriors … and possibly at least one coffee shop.
Fans of Game of Thrones have been reacting with bemusement and anger after a coffee cup from present-day Earth made an erroneous appearance in one of the latest episodes of the TV juggernaut, which has returned for its final season.
Continue reading...Winter is emptying the last of its sleet from the sky as Madhur Jaffrey opens the door to her home in upstate New York. The house, built in the 1790s, smells of ancient wood. Jaffrey and her husband, the violinist Sanford Allen, spend a few days a week here, driving up from the Greenwich Village apartment where they have lived for 52 years. At 5ft 2in, with her hair in a shiny bob, Jaffrey cuts an unfussily elegant figure.
We are here to talk about her newest venture, Madhur Jaffrey’s Instantly Indian Cookbook. A compendium of recipes for the Instant Pot, an electric pressure cooker that has won itself an army of devotees known as “potheads”, it is her 30th cookbook. What makes this particularly impressive is that, for Jaffrey, writing about food has always been a second career.
Continue reading...Sandler’s return after 23 years exceeded most expectations, a reminder that when his heart is in it, he’s a great performer
A returning Saturday Night Live initially opens with live C-SPAN coverage of Capitol Hill, but since attorney general William Barr disobeyed congressional Democrats’ and refused to give testimony last week, we cut to Celebrity Family Feud: Avengers v Game of Thrones edition.
The Marvel team is comprises “Scientologist” Thor (Alex Moffat), “swole Grimace” Thanos (Beck Bennett), Okoye (or as host Steve Harvey calls her, “Okee-Dokee”), and Groot (Leslie Jones, wearing a simple tree trunk hat and a brown long-sleeve shirt), while the Thrones faction includes an awkward Brienne of Tarth (Kate McKinnon), a high-strung Tormund Giantsbane (Mikey Day), new Maybelline cover girl Melisandre (Cecily Strong), “weird brother” Bran (Kyle Mooney), and a horny Arya Stark (Melissa Villasenior).
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