Culture

🚀 Read this insightful post from BBC Culture 📖 📂 Category: 💡 Key idea: 12. The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the HarvestWith or without Jennifer Lawrence's hero archer, Katniss Everdeen, audiences can't get enough of The Hunger Games, so 2023's The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows with another prequel adapted from a Suzanne Collins novel. This film is set 24 years before the first Hunger Games films, so it features younger versions of many of the main characters from Katniss' saga. It should be fun to see how well the new actors get along with the old ones. Ralph…

🚀 Explore this insightful post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Film,Culture,Marvel,Science fiction and fantasy films,Metropolis,Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 💡 Main takeaway: 2025 seems more futuristic. Maybe it's the "f" sound in "five." But 2026 is still one step ahead, which is where we are now, where every science-fiction development – ​​especially the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence – looks miserable, or perhaps worse. (Doesn't it seem as if, in a dystopia, anti-human, corporate-backed technology would actually work a little better?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?The answer, at least when it comes to the…

🚀 Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Music,Culture,Jazz 📌 Key idea: HeyWriting jazz reviews for 2026 with a story dating back to the mid-1980s might risk alienating the audience, but it was the decade in which a far-sighted young saxophonist on the UK jazz scene, called Ian Ballamy, first appeared on this writer's radar. The cross-generational lineup and catchy themes of Riversphere, his first solo release in years, are a testament to why he's been there for 40 years.Artwork for Riversphere Volume 1In their twenties, Palami and pianist/composer Jango Betts often teamed up as…

🚀 Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Blue,Pop and rock,Music,Culture ✅ Here’s what you’ll learn: 'forLouie's at home / Oh, it's party time! Consider the 40-man band on Souls of the Underground, the penultimate song on this seventh album, and their fourth since their reunion in 2011. The British four-piece are keen to take us back to the heyday of the early 2000s, a time of Met bar table service, with the ladies having “a little prosecco” and the gents having a “nice cold beer”. Musically, this is almost more complex than the (relatively)…

💥 Explore this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Television,Television & radio,Culture,Taskmaster,TV comedy ✅ Key idea: New Year's treat for Taskmaster9pm on Channel 4TV chef Big Zo, former lioness Jill Scott, Eurovision star Sam Ryder, Dictionary Corner's Susie Dent and Strictly winner Rose Ayling-Ellis are the brave contestants vying to win a golden bust of Greg Davies in this two-part special - from goading a dangerous animal to playing the glockenspiel. Plus, which one of them is going to sweat it out on a foot pump for 20 minutes? Holly RichardsonWould I lie to you?7.30pm on…

💥 Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Television,Culture,Television & radio 📌 Main takeaway: 'WRooster hat-up! These were the words that ended the first broadcast on the smallest television station in the world. Hours earlier, four local young men had been persuaded to serve as live-in presenters at a Sunday school in a quiet village. Despite the dead air and awkward line, it was the poor quality of transmission that caused the stars - Michelle Hornby (31), Jonathan Brown (27), James Warburton (25) and Deborah Cocking (21) - to apologize and cut off the opening…

✨ Read this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Film,Paul Mescal,Culture,Josh O'Connor 📌 Key idea: All things considered, telling Paul Mescal that I once bet on him wasn't the ice-breaker I had hoped for. Or rather, it breaks the ice in an unusual way."The main question," he says, his voice revealing a hint of panic, "is what's the bet? Who's most likely to join the 27 club?"Wow: This is depressing – but funny. Josh O'Connor, who plays Mescal's lover in the tough new wartime love story History of Sound, certainly thinks so. He sat next to…

✨ Check out this trending post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Games,2026 culture preview,Culture,PlayStation 5,Xbox series S/X,Nintendo Switch 2,PC,Steam,Action games,Adventure games,Grand Theft Auto,Pokémon,Halo 💡 Main takeaway: cairnLive out your mountaineering fantasy and take on the brave elements in this beautifully illustrated climbing game. You must carefully position climber Aava's hands and feet to make your way up a forbidden mountain, camping on ledges and bandaging her fingers as you go. Like real climbing, it is difficult and somewhat brutal. PC, PlayStation 5; January 29Onward and upward... Cairn. Image: Bakers GameNew animalAn animated horror game for players in…

🚀 Discover this awesome post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: The Traitors,Television & radio,BBC,BBC One,Culture,Media,UK news ✅ Key idea: A retired police detective, a crime writer and a psychologist are among the next group of contestants to enter Castle of Traitors, as the BBC has revealed details of the latest series of its hit investigative show.Among those to be divided will also be a sweet shop assistant, a cybersecurity expert and a personal trainer into conspiring "traitors" and "loyalists" tasked with exposing them.The latest series, which launches on New Year's Day on BBC One and iPlayer, will…

💥 Read this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖 📂 Category: Film,2026 culture preview,Culture,Chloé Zhao,Park Chan-wook,Bradley Cooper,Emerald Fennell,Maggie Gyllenhaal,Paolo Sorrentino,Christopher Nolan,Denis Villeneuve,Pedro Almodóvar,Alejandro González Iñárritu,Greta Gerwig,Jesse Eisenberg,Jessie Buckley,Danny Boyle,Paul Mescal,Emily Watson,Margot Robbie,Christian Bale,Ryan Gosling,Meryl Streep,Guy Pearce,Cillian Murphy,Aaron Sorkin 📌 Main takeaway: Jessie Buckley may need to hire a carpenter for the silverware-cabinet she is expected to need for her hugely admired performance in the film based on the Maggie O’Farrell novel. She plays Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, grieving the terrible loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, in 1596, which the story imagines to be…