Culture

‘Rock stars would be like, Yeah, bring the kid in’: Cameron Crowe on his wild years as a teenage music journalist | Cameron Crowe

‘Rock stars would be like, Yeah, bring the kid in’: Cameron Crowe on his wild years as a teenage music journalist | Cameron Crowe

Cameron Crowe has a vivid memory of the day he began filming his own life story. It was the summer of 1999 and he was back in his home city of San Diego, on the same streets where he had spent his surreal teenage years, flitting between suburban domesticity and his new life as a prodigious music writer, spending long weeks in the company of such 1970s gods as David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, the Allman Brothers and Led Zeppelin.Shooting was about to begin on a scene in which his 15-year-old self – renamed “William Miller” and played by the unknown actor…
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‘Verging on unwatchable’: Guardian writers on their most stressful movies | Film

‘Verging on unwatchable’: Guardian writers on their most stressful movies | Film

FallThe only movie I have literally had to take breaks from in order to give my sympathetic nervous system time to downshift out of flight or flight mode, Scott Mann’s 2022 psychological thriller Fall is brilliant in its simplicity. Thrill-seeking climbing influencer Hunter convinces her bestie Becky to do a little immersion therapy after her husband Dan’s sudden death during a climb leaves her fearful, depressed and suicidal. The goal: to climb a decommissioned TV transmission tower deep in the California desert that’s roughly twice the height of the Eiffel Tower. When the rickety ladder that gets them to a…
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TV tonight: a French psychological thriller about a ‘perfect’ nanny | Television & radio

TV tonight: a French psychological thriller about a ‘perfect’ nanny | Television & radio

The Intruder9pm, BBC FourA claustrophobic “don’t trust the perfect nanny!” psychological French thriller from the creators of Paris Police 1900. When wealthy mother of three Paula (Mélanie Doutey) returns to work, she and her husband hire Tess (Lucie Fagedet) to be a live-in au pair. But too-good-to-be-true Tess soon starts to unsettle Paula, who is left feeling – and looking – like she can’t handle being a working mother. Hollie RichardsonThe Celebrity Inner Circle5.20pm, BBC OneA gameshow in which celebrity-civilian pairings are put through convoluted rounds containing impossible-to-follow rules, while host Amanda Holden screams “You little shafters!” at them. This…
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Operation Pope review – hard-bitten thriller about a true-life papal assassination plot | Film

Operation Pope review – hard-bitten thriller about a true-life papal assassination plot | Film

‘You want me to shoot the pope?” This is undeniably a fab jumping off point for a any film, based on real events or not, and in fact this gritty Polish thriller is a dramatisation of the 1981 attempt to assassinate Pope John Paul II. But you don’t need to be much of a history buff to know that that this particular crime would be on the JFK level of momentousness if it had actually succeeded. As it is, we follow Bogusław Linda as Konstanty “Bruno” Brusicki, a former intelligence agent who is offered a compelling carrot and threatened with…
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‘We were the original punks’: the rebel women revitalising local music scenes | Punk

‘We were the original punks’: the rebel women revitalising local music scenes | Punk

Ask Cathy Loughead the most punk thing she’s ever done, and she doesn’t miss a beat: “I went on stage with my neck broken in two places. I couldn’t bounce around, so I blinged the brace up instead. That was a great gig.”Loughead is part of a growing movement of women redefining punk. When Riot Women, Sally Wainwright’s new BBC drama spotlighting female punk, airs this Sunday, it will reflect a scene that’s already thriving far beyond television.That energy is being felt most viscerally in Leicester, where Ruth Miller’s 2022 Unglamorous Music project – now known as the Riotous Collective…
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Taylor Swift scores second-biggest UK charts opening week ever with The Life of a Showgirl | Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift scores second-biggest UK charts opening week ever with The Life of a Showgirl | Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift’s 12th album, The Life of a Showgirl, has given the US pop star her biggest-ever opening week on the UK chart.It is her 14th No 1 album (she has also scored No 1s with the Taylor’s Version rerecordings of previous albums), moving 432,000 combined units in its first week on the Official Chart. It is second only to Ed Sheeran’s ÷, released in 2017 to 672,000 first-week sales.Only the Beatles and Robbie Williams have had more UK No 1 albums than Swift, with 15 apiece. At a concert in London last night, Williams admitted that he had pushed…
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Moss and Freud review – Kate meets Lucian and they get on brilliantly with absolutely no funny business at all | Film

Moss and Freud review – Kate meets Lucian and they get on brilliantly with absolutely no funny business at all | Film

When Lucian Freud met Kate Moss turns out to be the encounter of a sweet, cuddly old gentleman and a guardedly opaque hedonist. Both look defanged.Freud’s sensational Naked Portrait 2002 is a nude study of the supermodel, to whom he had been introduced by his daughter, the fashion designer Bella Freud. Moss was pregnant when she sat for him – which lent a fierce, additional frisson to the painting’s candour and intimacy. Ellie Bamber plays Kate and carries off the unclothed moments with great directness and aplomb. Freud is played with Germanic R sounds by Derek Jacobi (who incidentally played…
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Post your questions for Penelope Wilton | Film

Post your questions for Penelope Wilton | Film

It’s hard to pick a favourite Penelope Wilton character; she tends to play such lovely and forgiving people, from John Cleese’s ex-girlfriend in Clockwise, Simon Pegg’s mum in Shaun of the Dead (“Don’t point that gun at my mum!”), Ricky Gervais’s confidante in After Life, and Richard Briers’ long-suffering wife in BBC sitcom Ever Decreasing Circles.Wilton began her career in theatre, in King Lear at The Old Vic and in The Philanthropist on Broadway. Since then, she has played an art teacher in The History Boys, Colin Firth’s secretary in Operation Mincemeat, Bill Nighy’s wife in The Best Exotic Marigold…
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Spitting Image comics decry lawsuit over depiction of Paddington Bear | Comedy

Spitting Image comics decry lawsuit over depiction of Paddington Bear | Comedy

A decision to sue the makers of Spitting Image over a depiction of Paddington Bear as a foul-mouthed drug addict is an attack on comedy and freedom of expression, the comedians behind the reinvention have said.StudioCanal, the production company that made the recent Paddington movies, is taking legal action against the team behind Spitting Image over the character’s reimagining as the co-host of a satirical podcast, The Rest is Bulls*!t.In a new YouTube video responding to the lawsuit, however, a dishevelled Paddington is again seen snorting cocaine and using StudioCanal’s legal letter as toilet paper. The video calls on viewers…
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BBC airing false claim about Euan Blair blamed on young producers ‘marinated in social media’ | Have I Got News for You

BBC airing false claim about Euan Blair blamed on young producers ‘marinated in social media’ | Have I Got News for You

The arrival of a generation of young producers “marinated in social media” led to a false claim about Euan Blair being broadcast on Have I Got News For You, the production chief behind the show has said.The first in a new series of the BBC show featured an incorrect claim that the company run by the son of the former prime minister Tony Blair had been given the contract to run the government’s new digital ID system.It fuelled online accusations that it explained his father’s strong support for ID cards.Jimmy Mulville, the founder of the programme’s producers Hat Trick Productions,…
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