Category : Culture

The Haunting at 60: is it still one of the scariest films ever made?

Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg count the slow-burn 1963 horror as one of the greatest of all time but it wasn’t always seen as a classicThere’s a strange kind of pride that many people take in not being frightened by certain celebrated horror f...

‘He was born for this moment’: Sean Penn on his film with Zelenskiy

On the first day of the Russian invasion, Penn was in Ukraine making a documentary about Zelenskiy – he discusses their bromance, and the qualities that make him inspiringIt is just before 10am and Sean Penn does not want to be here. He made the mist...

Mantegna: The Triumphs of Caesar – you can hear the trumpets and smell the elephant dung

National Gallery, LondonThe full glory of ancient Rome blazes once more in this grand, yet very human, exhibition of paintings on loan from the royal collectionMore than 500 years ago, Andrea Mantegna, court artist to the Gonzaga family who ruled the...

‘An active social act’: the Ukrainian playwright paying tribute to her mother on stage

In her new play, based on WhatsApp correspondence, Sasha Denisova uses her 82-year-old mother Olga to tell a vital story of resistance and survivalFor a year Sasha Denisova didn’t tell her mother, Olga, who lives in Ukraine, that she had written a pl...

Naomi Rukavina on being one half of Neighbours’ first biracial, queer couple: ‘Feels bloody excellent’

Starting out, the actor was told someone like her could never work in TV. Now she’s been cast on Australia’s best-known show and her message for him: ‘Taste it’Many Australians will have seen actor Naomi Rukavina on stage. “I was Ginny, Hermione, McG...

Oppenheimer overtakes Bohemian Rhapsody to become biggest biopic of all time

Christopher Nolan’s film about J Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, has passed $912m in worldwide box-office takingsOppenheimer has overtaken Bohemian Rhapsody to become the highest ever grossing biopic at the worldwide box office.Christo...

Russell Brand publisher pauses all future books with comedian

Bluebird, who were due to publish Brand’s new self-help book in December, took the decision in light of ‘very serious allegations’The publisher of one of Russell Brand’s books has said that it is pausing all future publishing of books by the comedian...

Poem of the week: To Toussaint Louverture by William Wordsworth

Published months before Louverture’s death in a French prison, Wordworth’s homage to the leader of the 1791 Haiti revolution is full of Romantic signifiersTo Toussaint LouvertureToussaint, the most unhappy Man of Men!Whether the rural Milk-maid by he...

‘Everyone was doing the crane kick’: Ralph Macchio on making The Karate Kid

‘Daniel has bravado and won’t quit. If I got my ass kicked by five karate experts on motorcycles, I would have probably found a different way to school’I was a skinny kid and looked young for my age, which was tough. I got a part in Francis Ford Copp...

If the Streets Were on Fire review – hope on show as BikeStormz riders fight knife crime

The impassioned story of a London group providing young people with alternatives to gang culture is emotionally and visually compellingMade over several years and much of it filmed, by necessity, with handheld cameras, this impassioned documentary is...

The big idea: could we use music like medicine?

We know that music influences our emotions, but could it improve physical health too?In my adolescence and early adulthood, I could barely contemplate a life without music. Each Saturday I would traipse an hour to my nearest CD store, and spend nearl...

Literary satire American Fiction takes Toronto film festival’s top award

Cord Jefferson’s story of a novelist (Jeffrey Wright) grappling with the publishing industry’s expectations of black writers is now practically guaranteed serious Oscar considerationAmerican Fiction, the literary satire starring Jeffrey Wright as a n...

‘It was so fast, furious and fun’: Elliott Smith’s noisy early band Heatmiser

Before the indie-folk that made his name, Smith was in a gritty, abrasive (and largely forgotten) post-hardcore band. As unreleased recordings emerge, surviving members recall their brotherly bondAt their last Fourth of July party before graduating i...

Esther Manito: ‘I still stand backstage thinking I should have worked in John Lewis’

The standup on her comedy heroes, preshow jitters and the parenting double standards for male and female comediansHow did you get into comedy?I was on maternity leave from teaching, at home with a newborn and a two-year-old, and felt like I was going...

Ballywalter review – Patrick Kielty makes acting debut in taxi-ride bonding drama

Kielty plays a standup with a troubled past, but it’s Seána Kerslake who is the driving force here, via her terrific performance as a prickly cabbyYou’ve got to admire comedian Patrick Kielty for putting his neck on the line in his first dramatic rol...