The Guardian Culture

Risk-taking, rigour and radicalism – Daniel Harding is an exciting prospect for Los Angeles

Also, happy 125th to the Wigmore Hall, and, the vivid soundworld of 16th-century SpainA tale of two conductors on the west coast of America this week. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Philharmonic announced that Daniel Harding will be their next music director from 2027, which is also when Elim Chan starts her job leading the San Francisco Symphony. These are both forward-looking appointments, showing a commitment to the future of these orchestras and the art-form in California.Mind you, San Francisco

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Power Ballad review – Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd star in terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal

Irish writer-director John Carney brilliantly brings together Rudd’s washed up wedding-singer and Jonas’s insecure ex-boyband superstarOnce again, Irish writer-director John Carney delivers an aspartame rush of enjoyment with this terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal in the world of music, starring Nick Jonas (from the Jonas Brothers) as Danny Wilson, a preeningly insecure ex-boyband superstar trying to go solo and searching for a hit single, and Paul Rudd as Rick Power, a washed up wedding-

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Backrooms review – Kane Parsons’ icily disturbing horror rewrites the genre rulebook

Debut from 20-year-old director examines memory, reality and fear after Chiwetel Ejiofor accesses an infinite series of hidden rooms that all feel creepily askewAll the lonely people … where do they all belong? YouTuber Kane Parsons makes his feature directing debut with this icily brilliant and genuinely disturbing conceptual horror film based on his web series, and scripted by Will Soodik. There is something here of J-horror, the V/H/S found footage franchise, Dan Erickson’s Severance and Nath

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Dark of the Moon review – bluegrass girl meets emo witch boy and their songs soar

Charing Cross theatre, LondonThe power and personality of its singers and music lift this Twilight-esque story into the realms of enjoyably ridiculousThe origins of this supernatural musical are in ancient British folklore but it plays out as a teen love story in small-town America. Young, spirited – and human – Barbara Allen (Lauren Jones) falls in love with John the Witch Boy (Glenn Adamson), from a community of Witches and Conjur People.She is willing to incur the wrath of parents and neighbo

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘The UK is a hostile environment to do art’: Tara Clerkin Trio on the​ir bold, bright music – and the fight working class artists face

The British band’s breezy, collagist sound has charmed underground music fans – though it belies the family and financial strife that went into their beautiful second LPDuring a session for their 2020 debut album, Tara Clerkin Trio were interrupted by building work taking place outside. Scrapes and clangs of scaffolding got caught in the chord loop they were making on a childhood keyboard at the time. Rather than scrap the recording and start again, they grew attached to the soft dissonance of t

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

The mural project honouring the Black cultural heritage of Rio de Janeiro – photo essay

Despite its majority Afro-descendant population, fewer than 10% of public monuments across Rio commemorate Black people. Photographer María Magdalena Arréllaga chronicles the project seeking to redress the balanceOnce home to the world’s largest port of arrival for enslaved Africans, Rio de Janeiro has, like the rest of Brazil, a majority Afro-descendant population.Many of the country’s most prominent Black figures – scientists, lawyers, athletes, politicians, writers, musicians, activists and i

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘There were bad moments and bad behaviour’: Alan Davies on booze, ego, comedy and cancer

At 60, Davies is less of a hell-raiser than he once was – but a great deal happier. He talks about the excesses of the 90s, the sexual abuse that made him such an ‘angry boy’, his recent bladder cancer, and fatherhoodIt looks as if Alan Davies is in the wrong place. Not as in the wrong venue: he’s here at the Pleasance theatre in Islington, a north London fringe theatre and comedy venue, where we arranged to meet. But he’s in the wrong part of it. Although there’s a stage with a single microphon

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

How Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons captured America: ‘One of our nation’s greatest journalists’

A new book looks back at the work of artist and journalist Garry Trudeau and how he told the story of a country’s highs and lows through a comic stripIn The Simpsons, Bart is always 10, Lisa eight and Maggie a baby. In Peanuts, Charlie Brown and Lucy van Pelt are perpetual children. In Garfield, age shall not weary the eponymous lasagne-loving cat, nor the years condemn.But Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury cartoons are different, with characters ageing, evolving, having children and occasionally even

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

What We Ask Google by Simon Rogers review – the secrets of our search history

The company’s data editor trawls through billions of queries to deliver a portrait of the world’s preoccupationsAs anyone who has procreated this century knows, childrearing involves daily rounds of online searching. The most common parenting-related queries feature in What We Ask Google, a valiant attempt by the search giant’s data editor Simon Rogers to create a “surprisingly hopeful picture of humankind” (that’s the subtitle) from searches performed over the past two decades. “Why do babies g

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘Argentina needs to end its fantasy of being a European country’: Lucrecia Martel on the story of a killing

The film-maker talks about her homeland’s ‘racism, paternalism and infantilisation’ towards Indigenous people and her award-winning documentary about a community leader’s murderIn one scene from Landmarks, the new documentary by the Argentinian film-maker Lucrecia Martel, a tour guide shows children a painting on the ceiling of a Catholic church depicting how “Indigenous attempted to break into the city”. “See how these angels fought to keep the Indigenous out, and they sent these beams to scare

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Fieldwork As a Sex Object by Meena Kandasamy review – story of a deepfake sex tape

The author of When I Hit You returns with a pithy, savagely funny tale of online shaming and the Indian manosphereWe can all agree that the internet today, especially two particular platforms owned by the world’s greatest megalomaniacs, is a hellscape. But if you think X and Facebook are purgatories of friendless trolls endlessly posting hate and bullying women, each other and minorities under the guise of free speech, wait till you experience the Indian version of that netherworld, as capt

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

A trip to the future: the best of Belfast photo festival – in pictures

Cape Town schoolkids heading home and rules for maintaining a long-distance relationship feature in photos exploring the theme of unknown futures Continue reading...

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Bullet in the Head review – John Woo’s Vietnam war fever dream is an explosive masterpiece

The Hong Kong action master’s deliriously violent 1990 epic fuses gangland thriller, war movie and tragic melodrama into a spectacular vision of greed and moral collapseThe title of this 1990 John Woo extravaganza might lead the uninitiated to expect a chillingly focused, targeted assassination. Actually, there are innumerable bullets and innumerable heads in this over-the-top gonzo spectacle. It is a crime thriller, a wartime action film set in Vietnam, but it offers something other than the us

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

TV tonight: Richard Madeley enters El Salvador’s terrifying mega-prison

The presenter visits the controversial Cecot jail. Plus: Anne discovers the true cost of babysitting in Amandaland. Here’s what to watch this evening9pm, Channel 5 If you can get over the idea of Alan Partridge being let loose in one of El Salvador’s most controversial prisons, Richard Madeley’s visit to the notorious Cecot is a genuinely chilling experience. He finds thousands of men silently sitting on stacked beds in cells that are lit 24 hours a day. When he asks about conditions, he is told

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘Writing is exactly like love – you need to do it in the dark’: novelist Leila Slimani on starting a new chapter in her life

Now in residence at the Madrid Prado, the author talks about its dark, inspirational Goyas, the clandestine nature of her writing – and why she finally wrote about her jailed then posthumously exonerated fatherIt is a bright, chilly spring morning in Madrid, and the Museo del Prado doesn’t open to the public for another hour. Without the crowds, the museum is amorphous and eerily silent. A pale light pools in the corners and casts long shadows around the paintings, as if the figures inside them

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Spider-Noir review – Nicolas Cage’s stylish take on the superhero as a 1940s detective is huge fun

All smoke, shady dames and black and white cinematography, Marvel’s latest Spidey offering is fast, witty and confidentAs is increasingly, wearyingly, the case as the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to expand/bloat/chase the dollar in an ever-more unseemly and less rewarding manner – delete according to taste – Prime Video’s new series, Spider-Noir, requires you to set aside some lore while retaining other bits. Thus I should point out that the arachno-inflected human being brought to you he

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Pressure review – Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser can’t save lower-tier D-day drama

A behind-the-scenes second world war drama focused on the importance of weather is too stodgy and repetitive to work as anything but a so-so TV movieIn a world of increasingly segmented audiences, the new movie Pressure cleverly brings together two adjacent demographics: weather dads and history dads. Those designations are honorifics, not gender-essentialist; spiritually dad-curious people of all ages (but, let’s be real: mostly over 50) may be interested in a behind-the-scenes story set in the

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Paddington 4: Armando Iannucci to write bear’s next movie with Thick of It and Veep cowriter

Fourth Paddington film will be written by Iannucci and Simon Blackwell, who wrote with Iannucci on The Thick of It, In The Loop and VeepPaddington is about to develop a particularly hard stare, with The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci set to write the bear’s next cinematic adventure.Variety reported on Tuesday that the fourth Paddington film will be written by Iannucci and his longtime collaborator Simon Blackwell, who wrote with Iannucci on The Thick of It, In The Loop and Veep. C

entertainment  May 27, 2026

The Guardian Culture

The Tempest review – Kenneth Branagh returns to the RSC in this enchanting production

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonProspero is reimagined as a conductor in this superbly orchestrated version of Shakespeare’s tragicomedyKenneth Branagh is said to have played 35 Shakespearean parts, albeit back in the day. Seeing him speaking in verse these days is something of an event, all the more so when he is making a return to the Royal Shakespeare Company after more than 30 years to take on, for the first time, Shakespeare’s magician, deposed duke and tyrant occupier. Even t

entertainment  May 26, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Magic, mastery and magisterial power: 10 of Sonny Rollins’ greatest recordings

After his death aged 95, we look back at a remarkable catalogue of work that stretches from vivacious mid-50s sets to his evocative performance after 9/11• News: Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95A 30-year-old Sonny Rollins had already made his unique mark with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk by the time this 1956 session was cut, just a year after bebop sax revolutionary Charlie Parker’s death – but hooking up with his contemporary and admirer John Coltrane happened by chan

entertainment  May 26, 2026