Feted authors ‘unworthy’

Gabriel Josipovici dismisses the portrayal of Barnes, Rushdie and co as modern literary giants Their mantelpieces might creak under the collective weight of literary gongs but, according to one leading academic, leading contemporary British authors such as Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes are unworthy of the accolades they receive. In an outspoken attack, [...]

Running on empty

Sherlock got rave reviews this week, and looks set to win awards. So why is it going out in the dog days of summer? The overwhelmingly positive response to Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’s drama Sherlock, which started on BBC1 at the weekend, suggests that it will be a strong contender when it comes to [...]

Tom Jones

Welsh singer set to knock Eminem off top spot with 40th studio album, Praise & Blame, but hints at collaboration with rapper It’s not unusual to be loved by anyone, as Wales’ favourite crooner has been reminding us for a good 45 years. It is, on the other hand, slightly out of the ordinary to [...]

Twins peak

Born in Transylvania, twins Gert and Uwe Tobias paint, sculpt and draw with a typewriter. It’s bold stuff, says Adrian Searle, and the product of a lifetime of shared obsessions There have been several pairs of twins who make art collaboratively. In the 1980s, the American Starn twins began working together on sophisticated photographic projects. [...]

Forza del Destino

Holland Park, London Never lacking in ambition, Opera Holland Park has set itself arguably its biggest challenge yet with its first production of Verdi’s vast and sprawling tragedy. The Force of Destiny was written in the middle years of the composer’s career, and founded on a Spanish play by the Duke of Rivas that is [...]

Lula snubbed

Cinema owner backs out of showing two-hour movie of Brazilian president’s life over Lula’s links with Iranian president The story seemed tailor-made for Hollywood: a hardworking country-boy’s epic journey from impoverished rural Brazil to the big city and then on to the presidency of one of the largest democracies on Earth. But the producers of [...]

The Road to Wellville: a Kellogg’s biopic with snap, crackle and crock

Anthony Hopkins is the master cereal-maker and iffy health practitioner in Alan Parker’s 1994 biopic. But was serving potty humour at the breakfast table really such a Grrrrreat idea? Director: Alan ParkerEntertainment grade: EHistory grade: C– John Harvey Kellogg was the proprietor of a health farm in Battle Creek, Michigan, and the inventor of Kellogg’s [...]

TV review: The Men Who Jump off Buildings and Californication

If you are going to become a base jumper, it’s best to become a very good one To most of us a building might be a thing of beauty, or a monstrous carbuncle and an excuse to meddle. Or something to be indifferent about – just somewhere with an inside to live in or work in. [...]

Radio review: The Listening Post

A father movingly remembers his son who killed himself The Listening Post (World Service) describes itself as inviting “close, unhurried listening to the stories of individuals”. You might think that lots of radio does this, but it’s only when you hear the intense, bespoke production – by Alan Hall at Falling Tree – that you [...]

How HBO has pushed back the boundaries of modern television

Since its first drama in 1997, the HBO channel has set the standards for today’s television As soon as you hear the static buzz that opens every HBO show, you know you’re in for a treat. Whether you’re watching gangsters with family problems, vampires with issues, or Sarah Jessica Parker and three other women swapping [...]

1-2-3-4 festival | Pop review

Shoreditch, London London’s trendiest festival is back for a third outing, but this year the young fashion rebels, with undercut hair and sock-suspenders, face an assault by the older generation. Survivors of punk circa 1976, Subway Sect mesh catchy melodies with defiantly scratchy guitars – although, as singer Vic Godard points out, teen hymns such [...]

Die Walküre | Opera review

Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-Marsh Any lingering notion that Longborough’s full-scale Wagner Ring represented folly has been blown away with this fine production of Die Walküre, the second opera in the cycle: it has both intimacy and integrity. From the thunder of the opening prelude to the tenderness of Wotan’s farewell to his daughter Brünnhilde, conductor [...]

Expert view: ‘We are becoming superficial’ | Editorial

Perhaps Josipovici’s condemnation is not of the novels, but of us and the electronic age, writes Park Honan Gabriel Josipovici is one of our best critics and he’s quite right: let’s have a debate. But this is a difficult time for the modern English novel. Martin Amis and other novelists are searching for a medium [...]

Rosanne Cash | Pop review

Sage, Gateshead When Rosanne Cash was 18, her father, Johnny, provided her with a list of 100 classic American country, folk and blues tunes and told her: “Learn these – that’s your education”. “Now here I am, 20 years later,” she says. “Okay then – 30. Oh, all right, almost 40.” Despite becoming a formidable [...]

Photographer Rena Effendi’s best shot

‘She was dying. In the light from the window, she was almost transparent, her breathing heavy and very loud’ I took this photograph in Mahalla, one of the old neighbourhoods in my hometown of Baku, Azerbaijan. There was a construction boom after the influx of new oil money in the late 90s, and all the [...]

Jon Boden’s big singalong

Folk singer Jon Boden plans to record a song a day for a year and post it online. But his real aim is to get us all to sing out loud together – in tune or not A few weeks ago Jon Boden, the current BBC Folk Singer of the Year, went to a friend’s [...]

Erykah Badu | Pop review

Brixton Academy, London The lot of an Erykah Badu fan isn’t always a happy one. In the long queue outside Brixton Academy, two women are indignantly discussing the neo-soul singer’s relatively low profile in this country: “I told a friend I was going to see Erykah Badu, and he said, ‘Who’s that? World music?’” If [...]

Lyn Gardner on the power of the audience

‘I liked Legally Blonde – but I loved the crowd’ Last week, I went to see Legally Blonde for fun, which it was. Particularly Sheridan Smith as Elle Woods, still giving 110% on a hot midweek evening six months into the run. But the most enjoyable aspect of the evening was the audience, who were [...]

Film review: The Karate Kid

Predictable kids’ stuff in a remake with Jackie Chan helping out Will Smith’s boy, Jaden. By Steve Rose Perhaps they didn’t have room on the poster to fit in, “Brought to you by the Hollywood Nepotism Institute and the China National Tourist Office”, but it would have been a more accurate description of this remake [...]

Ben Keith obituary

Steel guitarist and core member of Neil Young’s band On stage in 1973, the Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young introduced his collaborator Ben Keith with the words: “I swear to God, I love every sound he makes. No matter what the fuck it is.” Keith, who has died of a suspected heart attack aged 73, played alongside Young [...]

Noir Désir singer convicted of murdering girlfriend has parole lifted

Release of Bertrand Cantat, who admitted abuse of actress Marie Trintignant, causes concern to family and feminist groups Bertrand Cantat, the French singer convicted of murdering his actor girlfriend during a violent row in 2003, will be officially declared a free man tomorrow after serving half of his eight-year prison sentence. The frontman of rock [...]

Interactive graphic: Marden Henge – Stonhenge’s big brother

Archaeologists have uncovered the site of a prehistoric building that has lain undisturbed for more than 4,000 years Paddy Allen Maev Kennedy

New band of the day – No 835: Aeroplane

This bonkers blend of titanic beats and blockbuster bombast is as sonically arresting as anything you’ll hear this year Hometown: Brussels. The lineup: Vito DeLuca (everything). The background: We’re all about singles here at New Band of the Day. But though we love the three-minute burst of glory, spare a thought for the soon to [...]

Christopher Nolan’s Inception: brilliant conundrum or pretentious twaddle?

Since its release, Inception has sparked intense debate on the web. Is it the new Bladerunner, or the kind of film you need a diagram to work out – and is that a bad thing?

Film trailer: The Switch

A drunken swap of a sperm donation carries repercussions for two friends years later

Clip joint: doors

Put your best foot forward as we take a stroll round the best doors on film with Kevin Holmes. After you … Few bits of furniture are so rich in symbolic meaning as the door: it can be an opening or an exit, a beginning or an ending. It can protect and guard but also [...]

Condoleezza Rice and Aretha Franklin perform duet

Respect mutual between surprise pairing of former Republican secretary of state and the Queen of Soul It was an unlikely pairing. Stage left, Condoleezza Rice, the former Republican darling, a classically trained pianist and academic perhaps better known as George Bush’s enforcer. Stage right, Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul, the voice of black emancipation [...]

Martin Parr’s best shot

The photographer on shooting Russia’s nouveau riche at the Moscow Millionaire Fair Martin Parr Alex Healey Michael Tait

Booker longlist

Booker prize longlist of 13 ignores Amis, McEwan and Rushdie for novels characterised by humour and storytelling Martin Amis may be getting heartily sick of people mentioning he’s never won the Man Booker. But the wait goes on, after his novel The Pregnant Widow – along with books from Salman Rushdie and Ian McEwan – [...]

Zeffirelli’s villa

Acclaimed director’s Italian retreat on the Amalfi coast reopens as luxury hotel – three years after sale “Leonard Bernstein, Laurence Olivier, Maria Callas, Elizabeth Taylor – it sounds like a legend, doesn’t it?” mused Italy’s most celebrated opera and film director, Franco Zeffirelli, as he recalled the guests who had passed through his retreat on [...]

Double trouble

They are theatrical firebrands in their own right – so why did Alistair Beaton and Anthony Neilson team up for this year’s big Edinburgh festival premiere? Maddy Costa joins rehearsals Judging by their work alone, Alistair Beaton and Anthony Neilson have little in common. Both are known as rebels, but the means by which they [...]

Let the right one win: a Let Me In/Let the Right One In trailer battle

Given Hollywood’s terrible remake record, are fears about the forthcoming adaptation of this Swedish vampire original justified? . Everyone has their own favourite “bad remake” story. Some like the 1993 Sandra Bullock/Kiefer Sutherland remake of The Vanishing, which deserved to be retitled The Gormlessly Tacked-On Shovel Fight. Others preferred Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla reboot, where [...]

The Cars may be driving towards a reunion

Facebook photo showing band members in the studio sparks rumours that the new wave rockers are to re-form It’s amazing what one little photograph can do. An image posted to the Cars’ Facebook group has sparked rumours that the new wave band are to reunite. Although the Cars have not have performed together since 1987, [...]

Pink book covers make me see red

Why can’t publishers serve fiction for girls without a simpering array of pearly grins and pony-tails? Enough candy-coating Earlier this year Meg Rosoff expressed a desire to let loose with an illegal firearm, goaded by the “aggressive pinkness” of the upcoming Queen of Teen award. My immediate reaction was to applaud her vehemently. The Q [...]

The Inception diagram: the shape of dreams | Paul MacInnes

A graphical rendering of the universe of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster is just what you need to join the in-depth online debates with confidence Since its release 10 days ago, Inception has become the word on everyone’s lips. Or, rather, the word on the tips of everyone’s fingers as they bang away online trying to work [...]

Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie/Järvi | Classical review

Royal Albert Hall, London This year’s Proms have already seen heated online debates about the loss of orchestral or vocal detail in the Albert Hall’s reverberant acoustic, and how where you stand or sit affects your experience of the concert. So the first thing that needs to be said about the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie’s Beethoven evening [...]

Arcade Fire webcast to be directed by Terry Gilliam

Montreal band to stream concert footage online – and the man behind Brazil and 12 Monkeys is calling the shots. Expect Johnny Depp to contribute a glockenspiel solo Terry Gilliam is to direct a forthcoming webcast by Arcade Fire. When the Canadian band play Madison Square Garden in New York on 5 August, the man [...]

Artist of the week 98: Oscar Tuazon

Inspired by ‘outlaw architecture’ this Seattle native channels the extreme DIY and freethinking of hippy survivalists going off-grid Oscar Tuazon‘s art may be vulnerable, but you’d never guess. His sculpture-cum-architecture has used raw slabs of concrete, steel and untreated wooden beams, bark-encrusted tree trunks and weighty metal chains. For his current installation, My Mistake, at [...]

Neil Young to issue four unreleased albums

‘Lost’ classics will finally see the light of day as part of singer’s forthcoming Archives Volume 2 After keeping them in the vaults for nearly 40 years, Neil Young is planning to issue four unreleased albums. Homegrown, Oceanside-Countryside and Chrome Dreams will be released as part of the singer’s Archives Volume 2. Young will also [...]

Kanye West premieres new material at Facebook HQ

The rapper’s tabletop performance of his ‘poetry’ was enjoyed by the world’s leading social networking employees Kanye West has posted a couple of clips that show him debuting new material in the unlikely setting of Facebook HQ. Wearing an dashing suit and standing on a table, West delivered a capella versions of Lost in the [...]

Arts for everyone is cheap considering its rich returns | Polly Toynbee

A 25% cut won’t be plugged by philanthropy. To take this paltry sum is a political gesture, not a financial necessity In less than a year shrouds will be waving, bloody stumps displayed with empty begging bowls as the coalition lays into public services. It will be hard to tell who is most seriously injured [...]

A month in Ambridge

At last! Jude has packed his bags and no one is sad to see him go. And then there was the full horror of Lynda Snell’s murder mystery play Listen to The Archers on iPlayer And so, Jude is gone, his departure as sensitively handled as any other moment in his relationship with Pip. He [...]

Watch this

Leverage | The Men Who Jump Off Buildings | Californication | Law & Order: Criminal Intent | Justified | My Name is Earl Leverage9pm, Bravo Former insurance investigator Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) is a scrupulously honest man. It’s just the venal rich who force him to commit crimes as he bids to right wrongs. Luckily, [...]

Radio review: All Around Bob Monkhouse

A fascinating insight into the ‘slightly too slick’ game-show hostListen on iPlayer Barry Cryer gave himself a tall order on Radio 2′s Comedy Season – All Around Bob Monkhouse . “If you remember just a game-show host with a slightly too slick public image,” he promised, “you’re in for quite a surprise.” And we were. [...]

The Prince of Homburg | Theatre review

Donmar Warehouse, London Is it legitimate to tamper with the climax of a classic play? How would we feel if Hamlet lived on or Rosalind failed to marry Orlando? I ask because something similar has happened here. Heinrich von Kleist’s great German play, written shortly before his death in 1811, has been given a new [...]

Response: Though I didn’t have his diaries, my biography of Nikolaus Pevsner is still reliable

My sources are legitimate. I’ve interviewed those who knew him and accessed his archive Rosemary Hill must have good judgment as a historian: she has won a prize for her book on Stonehenge and enjoyed praise for her study of Augustus Pugin. But she doesn’t give that impression in her review of my new book [...]

Et cetera

Steven Poole on fanaticism, rebellion and the future of news Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea, by Alberto Toscano (Verso, £16.99) As Winston Churchill put it unimprovably, a fanatic is “someone who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject”. Yet “fanatic” is also a case of Unspeak, a way of pre-emptively eliminating [...]

Mad Men writer mad

As the series reaches its fourth season, Matthew Weiner complains plot details have been revealed in the press As the little written-about Mad Men returned to US TV screens on Sunday night, critics in the States were left scratching their heads after the show’s creator Matthew Weiner despaired at the New York Times, for revealing [...]

Is that Ben Whishaw – or Pingu?

Yes, British actors are doing well in Hollywood, but for some comedy fans, it’s a stretch to believe in these all-new heroes The new wave of young British actors firmly planting their mast on the Hollywood Boulevard continues apace. Inception’s Tom Hardy has just been confirmed as the lead in This Means War, Charlie’s Angels [...]

Blasted to be revived at the Lyric Hammersmith

Sarah Kane’s play was controversial in 1995, but the Lyric’s artistic director thinks this prophetic work must be seen today This week, west London’s Lyric Hammersmith announced the revival of a play its artistic director, Sean Holmes, considers the most important of the last 30 years, Sarah Kane’s Blasted. It will be the first British [...]

The secret of barbershop: harmonise, project – and smile!

The songs may date from the 1920s, but barbershop remains as cut-throat as ever. Alfred Hickling joins the former national champions as they battle it out at the UK finals We’re in the early rounds of an amateur music competition, and a group of nervous-looking gentlemen in powder-blue tailcoats can be found pacing the corridors [...]

Skitterbang Island | Opera review

Polka, London If you thought that opera was only for grown-ups, think again. This 45-minute, sung-through opera by librettist Phil Porter and composer Martin Ward combines music, singing and puppetry with an engaging, junkshop aesthetic to terrific effect in a show aimed at the three-to-six age range. Adults may raise an eyebrow at the thought of opera [...]

Gateshead car park: in praise of Brutalism | Owen Hatherley

The Gateshead car park is being demolished this week. It’s a tragedy, and not just for its architect Owen Luder, twice president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is Britain’s unluckiest architect. In the 60s his firm designed several once-celebrated, subsequently reviled Brutalist buildings – all now either demolished, defaced or derelict. The latest casualty [...]

Gilberto Gil | World music review

Royal Festival Hall, London The former Brazilian minister of culture advised hecklers that he “wouldn’t be playing the hits – only forró, just for a change”, and proceeded to continue the musical experiments that he began back in the 60s. Since then, Gilberto Gil has played a key role in the Tropicália movement, dominated Brazilian [...]

Hansel and Gretel | Opera review

Glyndebourne “Deliciously witty with an underlying subtext of modern consumerism” is how Glyndebourne’s blurb describes Laurent Pelly’s 2008 production of Hansel and Gretel, now on its first revival. Pelly has re-imagined Humperdinck’s masterpiece as a Brechtian fable about the consequences of being poor and hungry. Given that Glyndebourne is as much about eating as about [...]

Do Toy Story 3 figures add up?

Disney’s previews-based triumphalism is misleading but Toy Story 3 is still set to net its makers a packet – and batter Shrek The winner “To infinity and beyond”: Buzz Lightyear’s well-worn catchphrase lends itself rather conveniently to reports of Toy Story 3′s UK box-office success. With an official debut of £21.19m, the franchise’s much-anticipated second [...]

Booker prize longlist revealed

The Man Booker Dozen longlist has been announced. Discover which books are in the running and read our critics’ verdicts

Last night’s Prom

Royal Albert Hall, London The burgeoning genre of the percussion concerto offers experiences that are often at least as pleasurable visually – with the soloist rampaging around the platform, hitting almost anything that comes within reach – as musically, and frequently more so. Simon Holt’s 2008 A Table of Noises, given its first London performance [...]

Back to Big Brother

George Galloway in a leotard? A Chantelle/Preston reunion? Or a furious Leo Sayer? Who would make you watch the BB finale? Look, let’s not beat around the bush. You’re not watching Big Brother this year. Nobody is. I’m certainly not. I know that a woman who looked like Charlie Chaplin was in it, but I’m [...]

Tamasha at 21

One of Britain’s leading Asian theatre companies, it’s launched the career of Jimi Mistry

Savage on song

Thanks to YouTube, this 70s synth-punk band who never released a record have finally found an audience The clip begins with a frontal shot of a helicopter: the sound of its take-off bleeds into descending synthesiser notes. A caption comes up: “Screamers.” The second image to be seen is out of focus, a pink/brown blur [...]

Carola Hicks obituary

Art historian and biographer, her work infused large, iconic subjects with new life Carola Hicks, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a glamorous academic and a serious populariser of art. She created something new in the world of contemporary biography, writing the life stories and afterlives of iconic works of art such as [...]

Slim Bryant obituary

US country musician and guitarist with the Georgia Wildcats Late in his life, Slim Bryant, who has died aged 101, became entitled to make two unique claims. He was the last man living to have played and recorded with Jimmie Rodgers, the Depression-era singer and “blue yodeller” who was the first star of country music. [...]

Tony Banfield obituary

You have to warm to a theatre publicist who, having cut out six very large letters to spell HAMLET on the front of the building, realises they could just as easily spell THELMA, and arranges them accordingly on his office floor just as the critic of the Times is being ushered into his office to [...]

Letter: Sir Charles Mackerras obituary

Catherine Mackintosh writes: The death of Sir Charles Mackerras so soon after his final performance at Glyndebourne, in June, conducting Così Fan Tutte, came as a shock to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. In spite of his cancer, he appeared to defy all symptoms as soon as he picked up his baton, and [...]

New band of the day – No 834: The Smiles and Frowns

This folkadelic pop duo draw you into another time and place with lovingly recreated reminders of a bygone age Hometown: Phoenix, Arizona. The lineup: Adam Mattson (vocals, instruments), Christopher James (instruments). The background: The Smiles and Frowns are a little bit different. They’re an American duo from Phoenix whose self-titled debut album recalls late-60s psychedelia [...]

Arabian heights: Gorillaz stage historic gig in Syria | Stephen Starr

The biggest western act to play Damascus, Damon Albarn’s band avoid Glastonbury mistakes for a rapturous welcome From the moment Snoop Dogg’s face appeared on two giant television screens at the back of the stage, set against the walls of the historic 11th-century Damascus Citadel, the Syrian crowdknew they were about to experience something never [...]

The Booker prize longlist: your verdict?

We’re unexpectedly heartened by a Man Booker prize longlist that includes many Guardian books desk favourites. What do you think? And here we have it: this year’s Man Booker longlist – the “Booker dozen”, as it is whimsically, not to say tweely, known. First impressions from the books desk: exciting to see the young and [...]

Memorial to Pickwick Papers artist resurrected to ‘right a moral wrong’

London museum unveils gravestone of Robert Seymour, the artist who killed himself after ‘being dropped’ by Charles Dickens The scene on 20 April 1836 was horrific: the artist lay in a welter of gore on the floor of the summerhouse at his London home, his coat and waistcoat burning from the ferocity of the shotgun [...]

Arts funding cuts reveal the government’s poor business sense | Daniel Bye

The arts are affordable and profitable, costing as little to fund as half a pint of milk a week per person. The government would be idiotic to cut them Whenever there’s an economic squeeze, the arts are first to go. Ministers such as Nick Clegg and Jeremy Hunt may endorse the defence of the social, [...]

US authors blame publishers for Wylie Amazon ebook deal

Authors Guild says publishers’ low royalty pay-outs encouraged agent’s controversial step to sell modern classics via Kindle store As publishers and retailers wring their hands over agent Andrew Wylie’s reincarnation as the ebook publisher of authors including Philip Roth and John Updike, influential American writers’ body the Authors Guild has entered the fray saying that [...]

24:7 theatre festival | Theatre review

New Century House, Manchester The great thing about theatregoing in Manchester is that you can now choose plays to suit your attention span. The popular JB Shorts series offers drama lasting less than fifteen minutes, while those for whom nothing less than a full evening will do have the Royal Exchange and the Lowry. The [...]

Julie Taymor’s The Tempest to close Venice film festival | Ben Child

Director’s second Shakespeare reimagining will feature Ben Whishaw as Ariel and Helen Mirren as a female Prospero Julie Taymor’s revisionist version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest will be the closing feature at this year’s Venice film festival. Starring Helen Mirren as a female Prospero – or “Prospera” – alongside Ben Whishaw as Ariel and Djimon Hounsou [...]

Experts sceptical about Vatican’s attribution of ‘Caravaggio’ painting

Scholars doubt recently-cleaned canvas is work of Italian master as Vatican newspaper changes its mind about initial attribution Art officials today unveiled the painting at the centre of the latest Caravaggio mystery, after the Vatican newspaper suggested and then denied that the canvas was the work of the Italian master. The Martyrdom of St Lawrence [...]

Mauritania’s hidden manuscripts

Precious Arabic manuscripts from western Africa are under threat as Mauritania’s desert libraries vanish The bone-dry wood creaks as the book opens at a page representing the course of the moon, framed by black balls and red crescents. The manuscript contains 132 pages of Arab astronomy bound in well-worn leather, a 15th-century treasure stored, with [...]

Arts funding cuts ‘dangerous’ for north-east England

Leading figures warn that cutting investment in the arts, which have thrived over the past decade, will affect economic recovery Artists and arts chiefs from north-east England joined forces yesterday to warn of the dangerous impact of “deep or hasty” funding cuts. The north-east has been a cultural success story over the past decade, from [...]

How not to pitch a crime novel

A major crime-writing festival, a roomful of industry names to impress, and two minutes to do it in. Gulp Crime, once the Cinderella of literary fiction, is continuing to grow in popularity, as was clear last week in Harrogate, at the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing festival. The festival is a haven for the star [...]

How to save money at the Edinburgh festivals

Free shows, food for under a fiver, cheap digs and blagging backstage passes in our insider’s money saving guide to the Edinburgh festivals, which kick off this week Top entertainment for free Catch Unbound, every night from 14-30 August, at the Edinburgh International Book Festival’s Spiegeltent – a great mélange of stories, music and literary [...]

Rihanna jumps on board Battleship movie

R&B star lands role in forthcoming film about a naval fleet that protects Earth from alien invaders Rihanna is to star in a forthcoming science-fiction film about a naval fleet that protects Earth from alien invaders. It was confirmed this week that the 22-year-old R&B star will appear in Battleship, directed by Peter Berg. True [...]

New music: Lauryn Hill – Repercussions

Is this leaked song an old unreleased track or a hint that the singer will finally release a follow up to her 1998 solo album? Lauryn Hill has been away from music for far too long, so you can’t blame fans for getting excited about the unexpected arrival of a new song. The question is, [...]

HMVdigital invigorates music downloads market

The ‘top 40 singles @ 40p’ offer marks HMV out as a major MP3 provider. But once the offer ends where are the cheapest deals? Nabeelah Jaffer tracks them down Yesterday saw the launch of hmvdigital, the high street retailer’s online music store which is selling top 40 singles for the eye-catching introductory rate of [...]

Oliver Stone apologises for ‘antisemitic’ remarks

Film-maker causes outrage among US Jewish groups with comments about Hitler and ‘Jewish domination of the media’ Oliver Stone has apologised for comments about the Holocaust made in an interview with the Sunday Times that US Jewish groups have condemned as antisemitic. Earlier this year, the Oscar-winning film-maker caused controversy after he described Hitler as [...]

BBC3 travels to Glasgow and the Congo in its autumn season

Highlights include documentaries on clothes industry and soldier returning from Afghanistan, and drama about young lesbians A new drama about young lesbians in Scotland, a moving documentary that follows a British soldier as he returns home from Afghanistan after losing three limbs, and a young woman’s take on child trafficking are among the highlights of [...]

Nick Cave penning remake of The Crow

Australian singer reportedly revising script for new version of the 1994 cult horror film He was named one of Variety’s 10 most promising screenwriters in 2006, but since then it has all gone rather quiet on the film front for Nick Cave. This could change after a report by The Wrap that the Australian musician [...]

Pope pens children’s book entitled The Friends of Jesus

Pope Benedict XVI joins a long list of celebrities looking for younger audience with release of book about apostles Following in the footsteps of Madonna and Geri Halliwell, Pope Benedict XVI has written a children’s book. Already the author of a range of titles for adults, from an exploration of the legacy of St Paul [...]

‘One fart-gag per chapter’

The creator of Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer, talks about living with a criminal child genius Richard Lea Alex Healey

UK Film Council knifed – but how much did it contribute?

Today Jeremy Hunt sounded the death knell for the UK Film Council. But how much public money did it actually invest? Catherine Shoard

No plot, Sherlock?

Sherlock has a great new take on the characters – but what happened to the plot? Watch Sherlock on iPlayerWatch Orchestra United on 4oDWhich classic tale should Steven Moffat update next? Sherlock Holmes has been kidnapped – by Steven Moffat, the man currently in charge of Doctor Who. He has bundled Conan Doyle’s great detective [...]

Best seat in house

You can now watch live theatre, pop, opera and more online – but is it ever a match for the real thing? Leo Benedictus spends a week on his sofa in a bid to find out To get the most from any show, apparently, you have to be there. No technology can transmit the sound of [...]

Shoetime!

Which shoes should I wear to gigs? And why won’t people get off their damn phones and, like, watch the band? Another week, another set of fascinating anthropological indie questions to wade through. Thanks for all the posts and remember – if you have a question you’d like me to answer, post a comment below [...]

Unofficial portraits

Buckingham Palace has launched a flickr account with new and vintage images of the royals

Dracula | Classical/Film review

Hackney Empire, London “No, it wasn’t scary at all,” the girl said as she chatted to her friend on her mobile. “The old horror films are so funny.” Much of the packed house at Hackney Empire thought the same of Tod Browning’s 1931 movie Dracula, screened to a live performance by the Kronos Quartet of [...]

New Art Club’s ballet of belly laughs

Combining standup comedy with experimental dance, the New Art Club aren’t just a novelty act. The duo tell Brian Logan what made them put their funniest foot forward ‘It’s important and vibrant,” says comedian Tom Roden, “resonant and beautiful, rich and strange.” These are not words usually used by comics to describe their work, but [...]

School of Seven Bells | Pop review

Scala, London School of Seven Bells’ 2008 debut, Alpinism, breathed fresh air into the slumbering dream-pop genre. Having scaled their ethereal peak, now the Brooklyn trio have embraced the earthly delights of the dancefloor. Their second album, Disconnect from Desire, encases the cascading vocals of Alejandra and Claudia Deheza in hard synths, programmed beats and [...]

Oliver Stone and Tariq Ali: brothers in arms

Eighteen months ago, Tariq Ali got a call from Oliver Stone: could he help with his new film? The result was a powerful documentary about Latin America – and a new friendship Almost a year and a half ago I received a phone call from Paraguay. It was Oliver Stone. He had been reading Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, [...]

Penelope | Theatre review

Druid Lane, Galway I remarked of Enda Walsh’s earlier plays, The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, that his characters were trapped inside their own myths. In his latest drama, premiered by Druid at the Galway arts festival, he has gone a stage further: he shows four modern men confined by Homeric legend. The [...]

Axing the Film Council: a move that impoverishes us all

The government’s decision to axe the UK Film Council came out of the blue yesterday. But what does it mean for the professionals who keep our film industry going? I was on my way home from a meeting with David Thompson at Origin Films about a project called Granny Made Me an Anarchist when I [...]

UK Film Council axed

UK Film Council one of highest-profile quangos to be cutMLA also abolished in cull by culture secretary Jeremy Hunt The UK Film Council became one of the highest profile quangos to be axed by the coalition government after culture secretary Jeremy Hunt unexpectedly announced its abolition. In a raft of mergings, streamlinings and closures, Hunt [...]

Making a splash: newly restored Kentish Town baths reopen

Grade II-listed pool, which looked set to be converted into flats, saved as part of £25m project “It will be like swimming in St Pancras station,” the councillor in charge of the £25m restoration of Kentish Town baths in north London promised. “She’s not far wrong,” says a dripping wet Ian Dungavell, director of the [...]

Harry Beckett obituary

Jazz trumpeter and composer, his genial, unmistakable sound became legendary Blindfold tests – invitations to identify players by listening to short snatches of their work – have always been popular challenges in jazz circles. There have been a few innovators whom the cognoscenti could spot from the proverbial “handful of notes” (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, [...]

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