Culture

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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A secret history of gay people in the US military

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A unique depiction of military lifeNow Boots shines a spotlight on the courage and resilience of service members, who sublimated an integral part of their identity in order to serve. Created by Andy Parker, whose previous credits include Netflix's adaptation of Armistead Maupin's LGBT literary classic Tales of the City, Boots is faithful to the spirit of Cope White's book, which is candid, comedic and bigger on positivity than pity. Miles Heizer stars as Cameron, a closeted gay teenager who enlists in a Marine Corps boot camp in a desperate effort to belong – much as Cope White did. "I…

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‘We’ve all done stupid things but we’re all capable of redemption’: spoken-word artist Joshua Idehen on fighting hate with hope | Music

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Playing Glastonbury almost made Joshua Idehen quit music – twice. The first time was in 2007, when the spoken-word artist’s slot followed a dancer who had successfully roused a crowd of 800. By the end of his first poem, only a handful of punters were left in the tent, even though it was pouring with rain outside. “People were like, ‘Nope, I’d rather get soaked than listen to you,’” he says. “That was a sucker punch.”Nearly two decades later, on the Greenpeace stage this summer, the 45-year-old faced the opposite problem. Five thousand people turned up – another “earth-shattering” experience,…

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‘It’s like fencing with a close friend. Terrifying in a lovely way’: Colin Farrell and Tilda Swinton on taking a gamble with their new drama | Colin Farrell

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On a humid morning in Macau, a blue-and-orange phoenix embellished with more than 60,000 flowers is hatching from an enormous pink Fabergé egg in the lobby of the Wynn Palace hotel. The haughty bird basks in the attention of onlookers as it rotates on a diamond-encrusted perch to the triumphant sound of clarions, before returning to its shell. Chancing upon this spectacle, you think to yourself, “How lucky that I was passing at that precise moment!” Stick around and you will be disabused of your sense of good fortune: the hatching occurs every 15 minutes without fail.It is summer 2024,…

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The Woman in Cabin 10 review – silliness of Keira Knightley megayacht thriller tips it overboard | Film

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As it happens, ITV drama The Hack isn’t the only dramatisation of the Guardian’s investigatory journalism right now. There is also this … erm … entirely bizarre mystery thriller from Netflix, adapted from a novel by Ruth Ware, about an intrepid Guardian reporter called Laura Blacklock, played by Keira Knightley. Fresh off a lid-lifting scoop about Kurdish children, she is invited aboard a colossal private yacht with a party of notables and celebrities, as the guest of sinister plutocrat Richard Bullmer, played by Guy Pearce; he wishes to transport them all to a gala dinner in the Norwegian fjords for…

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Black Is Beautiful: The Kwame Brathwaite Story – exhilarating record of game-changing photographer | Documentary films

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There have been some fascinating documentaries about photographers: Tish Murtha; Martin Parr; Vivian Maier. Maybe the movie documentary form is something that naturally comes alive when showcasing particularly vivid still images. Here is another outstanding example, from writer-director Yemi Bamiro, about the remarkable career of Kwame Brathwaite, a photographer, musician and African American activist who was a unique politico-aesthete. With his brother Elombe, he virtually invented the phrase “Black Is Beautiful” in the 1960s by photographing the Grandassa Models in Harlem: young African American women who became the sensational template for beauty, doing away with the usual cosmetic products and…

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