Category : Culture

Last Days at Sea review – evocative documentary about a boy leaving his picturesque childhood behind

This wistful, moving film follows a 12-year-old Filipino boy as he prepares to leave a remote fishing village for the big cityVenice Atienza’s wistful and evocative documentary is rooted in the liminal space between childhood and adolescence. Having...

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff review – on the run in the new world

The American’s latest novel, set in 17th-century New England, is a repetitive but lyrical story of a young woman’s flight from community and her battle for survivalLauren Groff’s early fiction was concerned with the ways in which stories from the pas...

TV tonight: tantric togas – a history of sex through the centuries

Amanda Holden presents an entertaining guide to human sexuality. Plus Juice, a sitcom about a man who daydreams through life. Here’s what to watch this evening Continue reading...

‘No one gave me the finger more than David Crosby!’ Legendary photographer Henry Diltz on shooting music’s giants

From the Doors to Joni Mitchell, he captured the greats. But Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young won his heart. The revered Californian photographer looks back – and reveals the ‘lost’ Harvest cover‘Sometimes,” says Henry Diltz, “the great picture is the...

London museums lag behind regional peers in returning disputed objects

Museums from Glasgow to Cambridge proactively repatriating objects while national institutions ‘forced into position of inertia’In the past two years Glasgow has become the first UK museum to repatriate objects to India. Newcastle and the Horniman in...

‘The scripts were the funniest things I’d ever read’: the stars of Peep Show look back, 20 years later

It launched the careers of Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain, Mitchell and Webb, plus Olivia Colman – but it nearly got cancelled. Two decades since its first episode, its stars reflect on the show that made themEvery success story features moments of cri...

Drew Barrymore postpones talkshow’s return amid writers’ strike backlash

Actor’s decision to halt daytime show until labour issues are resolved has snowball effect, with The Talk and The Jennifer Hudson Show also postponing restartDrew Barrymore, who drew criticism for taping new episodes of her daytime talkshow despite t...

Vic Mensa: Victor review – scattershot second album from the rap maverick

(Roc Nation)A busy six years on from his debut, the US star swings from sacred to profane while celebrating sobriety on an album of hits and missesFew rappers are as interesting and articulate as Vic Mensa. Like Danny Brown or Jay Electronica, his so...

‘The buildings were a sign of civic pride’: anger as art colleges around the UK close their doors

Colleges that once fostered talent – often from working-class backgrounds – have vanished at an alarming rate. Two beneficiaries of that system are documenting its demiseOn a trip to Norfolk back in 2009, artist and academic Matthew Cornford decided...

Rouge by Mona Awad review – like drowning in poison

A woman is recruited into a demonic beauty cult in this intricate, sometimes funny novel, but the protagonist’s contemptuous voice becomes tiresomeIn Canadian author Mona Awad’s nightmarish new novel, a cult of beauty-obsessed Californian women pursu...

Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool review – plunging into the deep end of mortality

Wyndham’s theatre, LondonWhere other midlife male standups splash in the shallows of domesticity, dinner parties and feeling tired, Birbiglia dives right into family, death and the meaning of lifeThere’s no shortage of standup on the depredations of...

Mike Birbiglia: The Old Man and the Pool review – plunging into the deep end of mortality and middle-age

Seann Walsh review – the comic returns to type as he surveys the bin-fire of hope that is middle-age

Hackney Empire, LondonAs the dust settles on his recent tabloid notoriety, Walsh contrasts the domestic landscape of maturity with his wild youthWe had a fun night, says Seann Walsh – “but not as fun as if I hadn’t turned up”. The joke is that Walsh...

King Stakh’s Wild Hunt review – operatic fairytale of rebellions and false myths has present-day echoes

Barbican, LondonBelarusian and Ukrainian performers come together in this creepy and atmospheric haunted house storyThis operatic tale of folkloric ghost-kings, aristocrats and curses resuscitated from the mists of time seems like peculiarly conventi...

Dracula: Mina’s Reckoning review – Hammer horror meets Victorian melodrama

His Majesty’s theatre, AberdeenStrong performances are the lifeblood of Morna Pearson’s new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic tale for the National Theatre of Scotland and Aberdeen Performing Arts Thunder, lightning, very, very… atmospheric and, ac...