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Social Demographic · Sports

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Seb Hutchinson and R obyn Cowen to preview the upcoming Premier League weekend Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

The France forward took his time to develop but his attacking verve and ability to exploit spaces can endear him to Liverpool fans “As a kid, he always spoke to me about Liverpool,” says Amaury Barlet, one of Bradley Barcola’s youth coaches. No wonder that when the Merseyside club came knocking, the forward “didn’t ask any questions”, as he said in his first interview after a £123m move to Anfield. Barcola joined after three seasons with Paris Saint-Germain, but came through the ranks at Lyon, where interviews are conducted with returning youth players at the start of each campaign. It was during one such discussion that Barcola made his revelation to Barlet. “When he was 15, 16, it was his dream [to play for Liverpool],” Barlet says. “Maybe that changed when he was 19 or 20 … ” Or perhaps not. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Education

Recruiting ex-pros. Inflaming Ukraine-Russia tensions. Suing the SEC and being sued back. The school is adapting to a new reality – and also creating a new one In 1893, a chemistry professor named Charles Coates arrived at Louisiana State University and wrote that, to his surprise, “there was practically no athletics in the student body: no football, no tennis, and only very little baseball in the spring. ” A broad program of sports struck him as the kind of thing a school should have, particularly as US universities were beginning to tout intercollegiate athletics as critical to a balanced higher-ed experience and another way to justify the cost of entry. But 133 years on, sports aren’t merely the main attraction at LSU. They’re the school’s raison d’être, the blinkered obsession that consumes the university and its most prominent ambassadors. Any doubt that the business of educating college students is just a nettlesome distraction from the business of college sports in Baton Rouge has been emphatically dispelled over the past 10 months. On the football side, the school has spent or committed roughly $162m to its last three head coaches: Ed Orgeron, the folksy national champion in 2019 who received a $17m buyout when he was fired two years later; Brian Kelly, the unloved underachiever who received a $54m buyout after being fired last October; and Lane Kiffin, the Kelly replacement whom it signed to a $91m deal a month later. Clemson, the opponent for LSU’s season opener at home on Saturday, are about to find out what all that money buys. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Australian returns on AU$4.9m contract after season on sidelines Former No 1 pick hopes to reignite basketball career with fourth club Australian former No 1 overall draft pick Ben Simmons has taken a significant step towards resurrecting his NBA career, agreeing a one-year deal with the Sacramento Kings. The Melbourne-born guard returns on a US$3.5m (AU$4.9m) contract after sitting ‌out the entire 2025-26 campaign while rehabilitating back and leg injuries that have hampered him in recent years. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Jeering and heckling are increasingly commonplace, even at grand slams, as spectators try to influence matches Midway through the first week of the US Open a couple of years ago, Jiri Lehecka’s attempts to find his form were disrupted by incessant taunting from a spectator close by. “There was a guy who sat just behind my bench on a smaller court, court four, and he was talking to me basically for the first three sets, like non-stop,” Lehecka says. “He was talking to me like: ‘You can’t do it. You are tired. He’s better than you are. ’” Lehecka maintained his composure and closed out the match, but even as he focused on navigating the intense stress of competition, he believed he understood this spectator’s motivations. The spectator, he thinks, was not there just to cheer for his favourite player: he was a bettor who had put money on Lehecka to lose. He had entered court four solely to influence the outcome of the match. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Sports

Before his home grand prix, the Mercedes driver opens up on his rocky debut season and quest to become the first Italian world champion since 1953 If Kimi Antonelli feels any pressure as the favourite to take the Formula One world championship at just 20 years old and in his second year in the sport, it is imperceptible. He admits F1 can be brutal but a thing of beauty too, a labour of love for the Italian who has been a revelation this season. Compelling and brilliant, that he is also endearing and likable marks Antonelli out as more than just a potential champion. Sitting in the Mercedes motorhome it is impossible not to be struck by how young he looks, the tousled hair, engaging smile and eyes gleaming with youthful enthusiasm. He speaks with an open candour, the air of a kid in a sweetshop who still can’t quite believe all those sherbet lemons are there for the taking. Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

A first win for Andoni Iraola’s Liverpool, the introduction of the latest star signing in Bradley Barcola making for a successful Friday night. Better yet, continuing signs that Alexander Isak, last year’s model, is coming back to life, his two, well-taken early goals securing the three points. That Cody Gakpo, Isak’s supplier, might have been at Manchester City or Tottenham had the transfer runes been right, added further to a sense of renewal. Liverpool’s attackers were full of the speed and invention sorely lacking for much of last season. Once Barcola arrived in the second half, those velocity levels increased yet further, Liverpool playing the attacking style, high on risk and entertainment, the appointment of Iraola promised. “We are starting to get to the way we want to play,” said Isak afterwards. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

McCarthy/Waarts/National Symphony Orchestra Ireland/McAdams (Nonesuch) Dennehy’s Limina, based on areas of the body, is firmly grounded in the harmonic series, and sparklingly executed here, while Stephen Waarts gives a bravura performance of the Violin Concerto These two concertos, beautifully paired, again find Donnacha Dennehy writing music that is both firmly grounded – both rhythmically and in his fascination with the harmonic series – and, to the ear at least, joyously unfettered. Limina was written in 2023 for the pianist Eliza McCarthy, who is a powerhouse soloist here with the National Symphony Orchestra Ireland and conductor Ryan McAdams. It’s a serious piece born of a slightly playful idea. Its three movements are each named for a part of the body, staking out one area before moving to the threshold, or limina, of the next. Head starts with synapses firing high up the keyboard in sparks and glitter; it travels downwards, frenetic energy dissipating, towards Chest, which evokes breathing – not with regular rhythms but with gentle palindromic phrases that swell in and out and sigh back towards the same bass pitch. Nervous System begins deep in the gut, with coarser sounds – low piano vamping, and slapped bowing from the strings – but eventually escapes its tether and disperses around the keyboard. The Violin Concerto, written in 2020, is just as propulsive, and the outer movements especially are a workout for Stephen Waarts, who gives a bravura performance. In the middle movement his violin soars, pushing off from the orchestral support to trace slow, weightless somersaults in the air. The finale has a thrilling sense of motion creating its own gravity: as with so much of Dennehy’s writing, it’s as if the music is held together by centrifugal force. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

The orchestra – at the Proms this week – is hailed as among the best in the world, if not the best. For my money, that’s quite possibly right, but why? The Berlin Philharmonic are in London tonight and tomorrow at the Proms, days after closing the Edinburgh international festival in thrilling style. It was their first visit to Scotland in over 20 years, but the orchestra and their chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, are regular Proms visitors; their Royal Albert Hall concerts are always season highlights. “The best orchestra in the world”, as it is often hailed, brings programmes that offer the expected and – for them – the unexpected. Tonight there’s Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony paired with Elgar’s Enigma Variations, a piece that’s still an astoundingly rare visitor to this orchestra’s concerts; and tomorrow, the safety-first repertoire warhorse is Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, but it’s paired with Scriabin’s brilliantly unhinged Third Symphony. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Thirty years after Tupac Shakur’s death, a man has been found guilty of killing the hip-hop legend. William Shaw on the star’s life, legacy and untimely death In 1996, Tupac Shakur was shot in a drive-by ambush in Las Vegas. He was only 25 years old and already one of the biggest artists in the US. He had just released a huge album, All Eyez on Me, which spawned two No 1 singles. He’d worked with some of hip-hop’s greatest stars. He’d starred in Hollywood films. It seemed he could do anything. And then, he died. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Fifty years ago Parker was hailed as rock’s next big thing, but he picked a different path: cult records, a Hollywood diversion, an aversion to stardom. Ahead of a UK tour, he looks back at his strange trajectory To say Graham Parker enjoyed a swift rise to fame is an understatement. He played his first live show with his most famous backing band, the Rumour, in October 1975, at the Newlands Tavern, a pub in Nunhead, south-east London. By the start of the following year, he had a record deal and was in the studio recording his debut album, Howlin’ Wind. The buzz around him was such that the sessions were interrupted by the arrival of a succession of stars – Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott among them – intrigued to hear what the fuss was about: a petrol pump attendant from Surrey who sang like Van Morrison and had written a set of smart, sharp, literate songs in between filling up cars. The record arrived in April 1976 to vast critical excitement, a lot of it occasioned by the album’s closing track, the reggae-influenced, attitude-laden Don’t Ask Me Questions. After Howlin’ Wind came out, followed in October by Heat Treatment, things ratcheted up another notch. Parker turned up in Australia to discover the media waiting for him and a press conference arranged in the airport: they had taken the amount of music press coverage Parker was receiving to mean he was “as big as Bruce Springsteen, which was insane”. Low down on a festival bill topped by Bob Dylan, he found himself backstage collared by the headline act, eager to tell Parker how much he loved his work. There also exists a photo of Parker in Los Angeles, with, of all people, Michael Jackson, but their meeting was apparently less successful. “I said to him: ‘Michael, great to meet you, I did a version of [Jackson 5 hit] I Want You Back recently. ’ And he just sort of said: ‘Ooh. ’ So that,” he laughs, “was the full extent of my conversation with Michael Jackson. ” Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Like Johnny Depp and Chris Brown before him, Homme has got past his chequered history to retain an adoring fanbase. Almost a decade post-#MeToo, audiences no longer seem to care As part of the promo for Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Perfecth, the band has set up a novelty complaints hotline for fans to call. “No bitching too big, no whiny too tiny,” it promises. I’ll bite: how about the fact that frontman Josh Homme’s ex-wife Brody Dalle testified in court that he head-butted her so hard that she “saw stars” and said he had fantasised about killing her? Or that he kicked a female photographer in the face? It’s certainly not what anyone’s talking about as part of Homme’s friendly neighbourhood rock star image rehabilitation: duetting on Shania Twain’s new album, taking the couch on Celebrity Gogglebox, teatime BBC 6 Music interviews. Homme and Dalle clearly had a complicated relationship: he allegedly tried to throw her boyfriend off a balcony; he claims that she was violent towards him; both have taken out restraining orders against one another; Homme has full custody of their kids after Dalle’s boyfriend was found to have forged her signature on an application for a restraining order. Homme has recently talked about coming through a dark period, including successful treatment for cancer, and getting a handle on his vices. Nevertheless, there is clear footage of him brutally kicking the camera of photographer Chelsea Lauren back into her face, which he acknowledged in an apology video, and court testimony from Dalle alleging that a drunk Homme told her “I want to fucking strangle you right now” on one occasion, and head-butted her on another. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

A hernia may mean his screaming days are over, but the Napalm Death alum’s influence on metal echoes on in unexpected places – and with ‘heavy, ugly’ experiments in the pipeline, his passion for ‘outsider music’ remains strong On 4 October 2024, Justin Broadrick felt a pop. The singer and guitarist of pioneering industrial metal duo Godflesh had felt pain in his groin for several years. After a coughing fit following a show in Sofia, Bulgaria, he knew he had a hernia. “It was a small knob in my groin,” says Broadrick. “I got back home and told my partner, and she was like, ‘Let’s watch how it goes. ’” He continued to perform live for another year, wearing up to two hernia belts at a time. By the time he got it surgically treated in February this year, it was 13cm long. The next month, Broadrick shared a picture of himself in hospital and announced that Godflesh’s near-four-decade career will soon end. His condition had been caused by the physicality of shouting over their music since he was 18; he just turned 57. If he were to do so again, he would risk blowing out his abdominal wall entirely. There will be two more studio albums – starting with this autumn’s reliably crushing Decay, recorded pre-surgery – and possibly some archival releases and remixes. But beyond that? Nothing. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Referencing Tarkovsky and French theory, the Austrian-Iranian singer is writing some of today’s wittiest music – though she’s ‘too pop for the art world, too indie-darling for the mainstream’ You wait ages for a brilliant pop song about film-making and then two come along at once. Following on from Charli xcx’s Camera comes Actress by Sofie Royer, with lyrics referencing rotoscoping, call sheets, screenplays, establishing shots, cinéma verité and more. “When the dust settles on your heart / I’d like to audition for the leading part,” she purrs over pumping disco, screwball-funny as she stacks up the metaphors to woo some Letterboxd-brained beau. “My mise-en-scène is flawless, don’t you know I’m quite adored / I’ll win you over in 35mm 4K-restored. ” It’s a typically smart and witty number from a singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and, as it happens, aspiring actor, whose erudition and taste light up one of the best albums of the year, the forthcoming Before/After. Its lead single Cowboy Mouth is a recreation of a Sam Shepard play in song; another song makes a catchy funk-pop chorus from the word “sesquicentennial”. Her music is cosmopolitan enough to sit Italo disco next to new wave and garage rock, and across her discography there’s a big cast of cultural figures from Andrei Tarkovsky to Kenneth Anger, Luigi Mangione to Ivy Wolk, knowingness offset by her keen sense of humour. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

In an ambitious new project, a cast of New Yorkers will help to create a one-of-a-kind tribute to New York City on stage in Central Park Last year, theatre-makers Emily Lim and Dan Canham spent time in Sunderland developing a three-night live performance that sought to capture the north-east city’s essence and history through music, dance and spoken word. It was Lim’s final coup as the director of the National Theatre’s now defunct, UK-wide community programme, Public Acts, and the result was Public Record – a title that nods to both physical media (the audio is stored at the British Library and Sunderland Museum) and to the institutional archive. “It’s very full-circle,” Lim says, now doing the same for New York City’s Public Theatre, whose own Public Works branch inspired the National’s initiative. “The key difference is that instead of serving the country and national profile, our responsibility here is to serve the city. ” Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Benedict Andrews’ intense, interval-free mashup of ancient and modernist classics is a show of two halves The Electra bit of the title refers to the Sophoclean tragedy of a daughter trapped in a cycle of vengeance, the Persona part to Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film about an actor who suddenly stops speaking while performing Electra on stage. Benedict Andrews’ drama after Bergman and Sophocles first welds the two together, then raises the concept higher by enlisting his star castings in Cate Blanchett and Nina Hoss to share the parts of Electra and her murderous mother, Clytemnestra, as well as Bergman’s inexplicably silent actor, Elisabeth, and her nurse, Alma, who fall into a disturbing, mirrored relationship. At the National Theatre, London until 10 October Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Hundreds of unseen images of the star feature at the Venice film festival, alongside virtual worlds exploring wildfires, wolves and the birth of stars David Bowie shares the bill with starmen, firefighters and Walt Disney wolves at the 10th anniversary edition of Venice Immersive, the film festival’s pioneering showcase for new forms of storytelling. David Bowie: Unseen Unheard – a 3D documentary featuring hundreds of previously unseen images – is among 69 XR (extended reality) pieces playing at the event’s regular base on Lazzaretto Vecchio, a repurposed small island off the Venice Lido. Venice Immersive’s 10th birthday marks a milestone for an event which aims to provide a bridge between emergent technology and traditional narrative cinema. But the programme’s organisers are at pains to emphasise the ongoing scope of a project that has in recent years prompted similar sections at the Cannes, Geneva and Toronto film festivals. “This is not a retrospective,” declares the official festival blurb that welcomes guests to the island. It almost sounds like a warning. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Our heroes travel back through time to San Francisco in 1986 so they can commune with aliens threatening future Earth – it’s preposterously good fun Here is the fourth and silliest movie in the Star Trek franchise, now on rerelease for its 40th anniversary. Directed by Leonard Nimoy, it’s a film of pure shark-jumping or rather whale-jumping absurdity. The film’s opening credits proclaim, with sublime confidence in its own unquestioned pop-cultural importance in the field of space travel, that Star Trek IV is dedicated to the crew of the space shuttle Challenger, which had that year catastrophically exploded midair, killing all seven of them. Spock has been brought back to life, as the apparent end result of all the bizarre metempsychotic plot contortions of the previous film. But the permanent and irrevocable death of Kirk’s son seems to be passed over remarkably casually. The eerie boyishness of Shatner’s Kirk, with that beaming smile, almost makes you forget that he has been through an agonising bereavement. Hasn’t he? Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Venice film festival: Mohsen Gharaei’s powerfully acted domestic drama watches as the failing patriarch attempts to contain family rebellion Iran is a prison and everybody is inside: cons and non-cons; parents and their children. That’s the message hammered home, never subtly but with terrific force and conviction, throughout the course of Mohsen Gharaei’s hothouse domestic drama, which plays in the Orizzonti section in Venice. It’s about a low-level jailer, crushed by life, who returns from the day job and proceeds to incarcerate his own family. He does so out of love and to reassert his authority, to protect his wife and kids from the world and from their own foolish notions. For him, it’s a bone-headed busman’s holiday. For his family, it’s a nightmarish tragicomic staycation. Veteran Iranian actor Farhad Aslani is perfectly cast as Rashid Hafizhi, Gharaei’s misguided prison guard. Rashid is a burly bear of a man who nonetheless carries an air of bewilderment and defeat, as though he’s smart enough to know that everyone in the vicinity is just that little bit smarter than him. He’s been falsely accused of aiding and abetting a jailbreak and is facing imminent eviction from his rented family home. Then, just when it seems his day can’t get any worse, Rashid learns that his cherished eldest daughter, Ensi (Laleh Marzban), is planning to run off to seek work as a model in Turkey. Modelling in Iran is a non-starter, she explains. Ensi has to cover her arms and neck for each job, while the power supply is so unstable and the lights have a tendency to cut out in the middle of a photoshoot. Continue reading...

Natural · Natural

The building of a cemetery during the pandemic inspires the Huddersfield-born author to reflect on childhood memories and the changing local landscape When Huddersfield council proposed turning some local grazing land into a cemetery during the Covid lockdown, some nearby residents were unhappy. Not poet laureate Simon Armitage, who also lived close to the site. In the introductory essay to his poetry collection, New Cemetery, he notes how the dead would be ideal neighbours for a writer who enjoys quiet. He also “figured that once the departed had taken up residence in the soil, they were unlikely to be evicted to make way for some other form of public amenity or private eyesore”. From his home, Armitage watched as the cemetery took shape, the pastures giving way to walkways, parking bays and neatly arranged burial plots. The verse is rooted in his ruminations around the cemetery’s creation, which coincided with the death of his father who had taught him how to win a fight and the best way to hold an axe (“You’re holding it all wrong / It’s not a pen”). Each poem is named after a species of moth, among them Common Quaker, Dark Brocade, Pine Beauty and May Highflyer, and written in three-line stanzas. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Finally landing on Mubi, this Spanish mega-hit about six sisters drilled into becoming viral Christian pop stars is wildly ambitious, blackly funny and a true triumph. Oh, and there are UFOs too At Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona in 2024, nestled alongside the likes of Pulp and Charli xcx was an unusual addition to the bill. Stella Maris arrived on stage as haunting home movies, religious iconography and glittery gifs popped up on the screen behind them. Part-Haim, part-Heaven’s Gate, the six sisters performed their hits: “Christian electronic dance music” that their late mother, apparently, believed would help them to save the world. The performance was very real, but the band was not. It was a stunt for the Spanish TV mega-hit La Mesías or The Messiah, which was released there in 2023. Its seven episodes centre on an estranged brother and sister, Enric and Irene, who discover that their siblings have become a viral pop band. Cue a soft-focus, flashback-heavy trip into the family’s past, thick with emotional neglect, parental narcissism and religious fanaticism. Oh, and there are UFOs, too. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Royal Albert Hall, London Amy Harman brought a warm baritonal vocalise to premiere from nonagenarian Thea Musgrave, while Felix Klieser bent his unique horn technique to Mozart Amid this year’s crop of Proms premieres, one stood out a mile – long before any of us had heard a note of it. Out of the Darkness is a new bassoon concerto by the 98-year-old Scottish composer Thea Musgrave, whose music was first heard at the Proms in 1960. Sixty-six years later, Musgrave is one of classical music’s most eminent elder stateswomen; her next opera will make its debut next year. But bassoon concertos remain a rare breed. The first performance of Out of the Darkness emerged from a dark grumble of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields’ percussion and bass instruments, which bassoonist Amy Harman answered from the back of the stage, weaving a warm, baritonal vocalise through the orchestral duskiness. Only the solo violin line of ASMF’s director Benjamin Marquise Gilmore offered a lighter, brighter sound, until it was picked up by the rest of the violins. The musical material was all beguiling loops and phrases ending in question marks, Harman’s tone deliciously lyrical. Nothing was spelled out, except her journey around the orchestra, the bassoon gathering rhythmic vitality as she walked to join the trumpets, then double basses, finally arriving at the front – a soloist’s standard spot – in time for the disarmingly near-tonal final chord. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Royal Albert Hall, London Yannick Nézet-Séguin polished up the Rosenkavalier suite then gave an exceptional reading of the composer’s self-congratulatory tone poem, while Elza van den Heever delivered a visceral account of Salome’s final scene Artistically ambitious and with an ego the size of a small planet, Richard Strauss was rarely backwards in coming forwards. When quizzed about the wisdom of depicting his 34-year-old self in music he brushed the matter aside, declaring himself no less interesting than Napoleon. The work in question, the self-congratulatory yet brilliantly conceived tone poem Ein Heldenleben, formed the second half of this all-Strauss programme. Before that, the Met Orchestra, here making their Proms debut, stayed on home turf with music from the operas. The Rosenkavalier suite, compiled by hand unknown, is frankly a mess, lurching from one bonbon to the next with never a thought for musical logic (the overblown ending is truly crass). Yannick Nézet-Séguin did a decent job of papering over the cracks, letting the music unfold naturally rather than forcing its ham-fisted transitions. The love scenes were the highlight here, the orchestra spacious and shapely. If the heart didn’t leap as it might, it was likely due to the absence of the human voice. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

McDonagh’s new film, Wild Horse Nine, stars John Malkovich as an agent in 1970s Chile who feels ‘guilt and regret’ over his role in global interventions The US’s history of intervening in democratic processes around the world deserves more attention in the light of current political developments, playwright and film-maker Martin McDonagh has said, as his Oscar-tipped film about a rueful CIA agent premieres at the Venice film festival. “I’ve been very interested in the truth of what the CIA has been doing over the last 60 years, and the awful things they’ve done all around the world,” McDonagh said about Wild Horse Nine, his first film since his 2022 tragicomedy The Banshees of Inisherin. “I think maybe something that’s not talked about enough. We know what the KGB are like, but we probably don’t question the CIA’s activity as much as we ought to. ” Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Patrick Radden Keefe, Ben Macintyre and the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins are among the 13 authors selected for the nonfiction award The Guardian’s chief culture writer Charlotte Higgins joins American investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe and bestselling historian Ben Macintyre on this year’s Baillie Gifford prize longlist. Higgins’ book, Ukrainian Lessons: Art in a Time of War, examines the role of culture in Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion, drawing on multiple reporting trips to Ukraine. Keefe, who won the prize in 2021 with Empire of Pain, is listed again for London Falling, which tells the story of Zac Brettler, a teenager who fell from a luxury London apartment after having posed as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. Macintyre’s Redwood: The Untold Story of the Cold War’s Most Extraordinary Spy, tells the story of a KGB double agent cultivated by MI6 in revolutionary Tehran. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Film-maker acclaimed for his celebrations of Roma culture had been working on a ‘historical film project’ in Provence Tony Gatlif, the French director of more than 20 films that mostly concentrated on celebrating Roma culture across the world, has died aged 77. His family said in a statement to AFP that Gatlif died on Wednesday of “a health issue” while working on a “historical film project” in Arles in Provence, France. “The beauty of his films, his generosity, his joy, his poetry, and his love of music will remain with us forever. ” Continue reading...

Geopolitical · Geopolitical

Lance Hammer’s first film in 18 years is a heart-wrenching masterpiece about family, mental decline and sexual consent. He and supporting actor Juliette Binoche discuss how they brought unabashed realism to a condition rarely seen on screen The first time we see Martin and Leslie, the elderly couple at the centre of Lance Hammer’s wrenching new film, Queen at Sea, they are walking together up a set of stone steps: one of their regular outings, we assume, in days filled with pottering and quiet companionship. They have their backs to us, and we can’t see their destination beyond a bleached sky that fills the top half of the screen. Symbolically, it may be deemed a bit on the nose: two people near the end of their lives, moving gently towards the white light of oblivion. There’s a whiff of sentimentality about it. But any doubts about this story’s willingness to confront difficult truths are blasted away by the next scene. Leslie’s daughter, Amanda, played by Juliette Binoche, pays a visit to the couple’s house in drizzly, middle-class north London, her teenage daughter in tow. Unable to find her mother and stepfather, she arrives at the bedroom door. Opening it, she finds Martin (Tom Courtenay) on top of Leslie (Anna Calder-Marshall), who lies impassively beneath him, the mask of dementia obvious on her face. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Spaceship-shaped gallery, featuring works from Banksy, Norman Rockwell and Frida Kahlo, is devoted to ‘visual storytelling’ – and is finally ready to open “I’m used to doing the impossible,” George Lucas said on Wednesday. But “this one almost broke my will”. The film-maker was describing the decades of work that went into his latest project, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, as it was unveiled to the press in Los Angeles eight years after breaking ground, following attempts to build it in two other cities. Shaped like a spaceship and towering over the nearby University of Southern California – Lucas’s alma mater – the long-awaited institution finally opens on 22 September. It aims to be a testament to visual storytelling across all kinds of media – paintings, comics, murals, photography, sculpture. Continue reading...

Social Demographic · Culture

Venice film festival: Filmed during the making of his queer royal feature, while the director was living with HIV, the candid footage includes uproarious scenes at a Cliff Richard rehearsal There could hardly be a more vivid time-capsule film about the publicly funded British arts scene in the early 1990s than this engrossing fly-on-the-wall documentary about Derek Jarman and his movie Edward II. Based on the play by Christopher Marlowe, it is about the 14th-century English king and his love affair with his court favourite, Piers Gaveston, with Steven Waddington and Andrew Tiernan as the leads and Tilda Swinton as Queen Isabella. This film uses the tremendously funny and candid making-of footage shot at the time by Seamus McGarvey, who had worked as a camera assistant on earlier Jarman films War Requiem and The Garden, and whose distinguished career as a cinematographer lay ahead. Jarman emerges as an effortless leader with a beaming patrician authority, rather like David Lean or Richard Attenborough, the kind of chief whom subordinates instinctively wish to please while keeping from him the grubby problems that they themselves have to deal with, such as paying quarrelsome extras or handling tabloid press questions. Jarman had had his HIV diagnosis for five years at this stage, managing the situation with meds which McGarvey’s camera notices. Continue reading...