Singer speaks at Toronto film festival after announcing eye infection had left him with limited vision in one eye
Sir Elton John has made his first public appearance at Toronto international film festival, days after announcing a severe eye infection had left him with limited vision in one eye.
The British singer, 77, was pictured in good spirits as he arrived on the back of a buggy at the Canadian festival, alongside his husband, David Furnish.
Continue reading...Portsmouth-born, working-class artist was known for collaborations with David Bowie and the Clash
Derek Boshier, the working-class artist who was a key part of the pop art movement and a collaborator with the Clash and David Bowie, has died aged 87.
The Portsmouth-born artist studied at the Royal College of Art in London from 1959 to 1962 alongside David Hockney and was profiled with Pauline Boty and Peter Blake in Ken Russell’s 1962 film about the pop art movement, Pop Goes the Easel.
Continue reading...Former gameshow host reportedly signs £1m deal with ITV for show in same vein as global hit Clarkson’s Farm
It seems to be turning into a rite of passage for former Top Gear hosts who have been the subject of public opprobrium.
Noel Edmonds is set to follow in the footsteps of Jeremy Clarkson by presenting a new TV series from his country retreat. The presenter, 75, who began working as a DJ in the late 1960s, has reportedly signed a £1m deal to return to television after a six-year gap by presenting a series from his park and vineyard in New Zealand.
Continue reading...Mendes, who popularised bossa nova among global audiences in the 1960s, had been suffering from the effects of long-term Covid, his family said
The Brazilian musician Sérgio Mendes, who brought bossa nova to an international audience in the 1960s with his band Brasil ’66, has died aged 83 as a result of health challenges related to long-term Covid.
In a statement, Mendes’s family said he “passed away peacefully” in his home town of Los Angeles. “His wife and musical partner for the past 54 years, Gracinha Leporace Mendes, was by his side, as were his loving children. Mendes last performed in November 2023 to sold out and wildly enthusiastic houses in Paris, London and Barcelona,” they said. “For the last several months, his health had been challenged by the effects of long-term Covid.”
Continue reading...Competition and Markets Authority to look at how ‘dynamic pricing’ may have been used to increase prices
The competition watchdog has launched an investigation into the Oasis ticket sales fiasco.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will investigate Ticketmaster’s handling of sales for the band’s forthcoming tour, including how “dynamic pricing” may have been used to adjust the price.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ken Ludwig gives Shakespeare Birthplace Trust largest private donation in its 177-year history
The charity that cares for historic Shakespeare sites in Stratford-upon-Avon has received an unprecedented donation of £1m from the Olivier award-winning US playwright Ken Ludwig.
The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust (SBT) can now pay for crucial conservation work on Hall’s Croft, the home of Shakespeare’s daughter Susanna and her physician husband, John Hall, who is believed to have advised his father-in-law on medical matters.
Continue reading...Residents tell of ‘apocalyptic scenes’ after more than 60mm of rainfall falls on Italian capital in less than an hour
Lightning has struck the Constantine Arch near the Colosseum in Rome during a violent thunderstorm, breaking off fragments from the ancient structure, officials have said.
The fragments were immediately gathered and secured by workers at the Colosseum Archeological Park, authorities in the Italian capital said. The extent of the damage, which occurred on Tuesday, was being evaluated.
“The recovery work by technicians was timely. Our workers arrived immediately after the lightning strike. All of the fragments were recovered and secured,” the park said in a statement.
Rome was hit by a sudden and powerful storm that dumped more than 60mm of rain in less than an hour, equivalent to a month’s rainfall in autumn. The city’s mayor, Roberto Gualtieri, described it as a “downburst”.
Continue reading...First salvage expedition in years captures more than 2m high-resolution images of 1912 shipwreck
A bronze statue from the Titanic – not seen in decades and feared to be lost for good – is among the discoveries made by the company with salvage rights to the wreck site on its first expedition there in many years.
RMS Titanic Inc, a Georgia-based company that holds the legal rights to the 112-year-old wreck, has completed its first trip since 2010 and released images from the expedition on Monday. The pictures show a site that continues to change more than a century later.
Continue reading...Review follows UK competition watchdog’s announcement of ‘urgent review’ into Oasis concert tickets fiasco
Ticketmaster’s ability to raise the price of concert tickets based on demand is being scrutinised by the European Commission, the Guardian has learned, as the UK’s competition watchdog launches an “urgent review” into the Oasis concerts fiasco.
The US-owned ticketing giant has been told it may have breached laws in the UK and Europe for inflating the price of some Oasis tickets from £135 to £350, leaving many fans devastated.
Continue reading...Lee Child says childhood visits to city’s libraries helped him to create protagonist as he laments proposed closures
It is said that heroes are made, not born.
In the case of the fictional ex-military action man Jack Reacher, it has emerged he was made in a library in Birmingham.
Continue reading...Lidded vessel is star object in rich Galloway Hoard and came from silver mine in what is now Iran
It is a star object of the Galloway Hoard, the richest collection of Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, buried in AD900 and unearthed in a field in Scotland. Now a lidded silver vessel has been identified as being of west Asian origin, transported halfway around the world more than 1,000 years ago.
When it emerged from the ground a decade ago, the vessel was still wrapped in its ancient textiles, whose survival is extremely rare. Its surface could be seen only through X-ray scans. Since then, the textiles have been partially removed and preserved and the vessel has had laser cleaning to remove green corrosion over much of its silver surface. It has also undergone scientific analysis.
Continue reading...New York-born artist, 53, known for collaborating with Missy Elliott, was performing in Connecticut on Friday
The US rapper Fatman Scoop has died after he collapsed mid-performance during a free concert in Connecticut on Friday night, according to reports.
The New York-born artist, whose real name is Isaac Freeman III, was headlining the so-called Green & Gold Party in Hamden, Connecticut, when he had what was described as a medical emergency. He was seen in a video posted on X to have collapsed behind the DJ booth after urging concertgoers to “make some noise”.
Continue reading...Peter Doig says ‘crazy prices’ on the secondary market must be reined in to protect young artists
Peter Doig became the most expensive living painter in Europe in 2007, when White Canoe, his atmospheric painting of a a moonlit lagoon, sold for £5.7m.
The Scot then saw his auction record broken in 2017 and in 2021 respectively, when Rosedale, his depiction of a house in a snow storm, and Swamped, another enigmatic painting of a canoe, sold for the eye-watering prices of £21m and nearly £30m respectively.
Continue reading...High demand crashes ticket-selling websites amid scramble to secure place on 14-date tour
Did Oasis sell out yesterday? Definitely in Dublin. Maybe in Manchester. It was hard to tell.
Fans struggled to buy the million or so tickets that went on sale at 9am yesterday morning for the Manchester band’s 17-date comeback tour. Tickets had been expected to be snapped up in minutes, but instead many waited in online queues for hours, frustration mounting, only to be kicked off booking websites.
Continue reading...Official tickets are priced at between £73 and £151, but some resellers are charging in the thousands for them
Oasis have issued a warning to people against reselling tickets for their reunion tour – or buying those resold tickets – on the secondary market at vastly inflated prices.
The band said tickets “sold in breach of the terms and conditions will be cancelled by the promoters”.
Continue reading...The Apprentice, an 80s-set drama with a scene in which he sexually assaults his wife, will get an October release
The controversial Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice is set for a pre-election release in the US.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, the film which premiered at the Cannes film festival, will be released theatrically in the US on 11 October, less than a month before the election.
Continue reading...Painting that hung in former PM’s study since 2009 no longer there – but aides are tightlipped as to whereabouts
In a summer punctuated by an election and then riots there has not really been a “silly season”, the traditional news-light period when holidaying MPs become worked up about trivialities. That is until now – thanks to a row about a portrait of Margaret Thatcher.
What is known is that the slightly austere painting of the former prime minister by the artist Richard Stone has been moved from the Downing Street study where it had hung since 2009, when Gordon Brown commissioned it.
Continue reading...Film among host of sexually explicit features on this year’s lineup as erotica returns to screens after years of chastity
It’s been 25 years since Nicole Kidman starred in Stanley Kubrick’s erotic classic Eyes Wide Shut opposite her then husband, Tom Cruise.
Although the Oscar-winner has evaded sexually explicit roles in recent years, she is making a comeback to the genre by playing the lead in one of the most risque feature films to premiere at the Venice film festival this year.
Continue reading...City fought off competition from Berne, Geneva and Zurich to host event, which began in Switzerland in 1956
The Swiss city of Basel will host Eurovision in 2025, as the song contest’s 69th edition returns to the country where it was born in 1956.
The Alpine republic won the right to host next year’s event after the Swiss artist Nemo won the 2024 contest with the song The Code.
Continue reading...Major film studio group Ace spearheaded takedown of piracy operation that garnered billions of site visits yearly
An international anti-piracy coalition including major Hollywood studios has claimed victory over Fmovies, a large illegal streaming operation based in Vietnam.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (Ace), whose governing members include Netflix, Apple TV+, Amazon and the Walt Disney Studios, announced on Thursday that it worked with Hanoi police to shut down Fmovies and affiliated sites. The illegal consortium, with sites including Bflixz, Flixtorz, Movies7 and Myflixer in addition to Fmovies, constituted “the largest pirate streaming operation in the world”, according to Ace, with more than 6.7bn visits between January 2023 and June 2024.
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