The Guardian Culture

With warmth, kindness and unlimited energy, Kanya King revolutionised Black British culture

The Mobo founder, who has died aged 57, had an unprecedented vision: to give Black British music a glitzy and joyful awards ceremony. But her impact went well beyond it• News: Kanya King, founder of Mobo awards for Black British music, dies aged 57I first met Kanya King in the mid-1990s, when I was still reeling from the failure of my own attempt to target the Black audience via my newspaper, Black Briton. Kanya came along a couple of years later and showed how it should be done. In framing her

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice review – mindboggling bag of tricks will make you believe in magic

Buxton Opera House Villages appear out of thin air, broomsticks take flight and owls turn into people in a truly enchanting showcase of theatrical storytellingIf you catch a young audience member at just the right moment, when they are old enough to be fully engaged but not so old that the sharp edges of teenage cynicism have begun to slink into view, you can make them truly believe in the magic of theatre. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is the kind of show that will make them – and possibly some adu

entertainment  5d ago

Hollywood Reporter

UTA’s Europe Head Moderated a Hospitality Panel at SXSW London: Here’s Why

Darnell Strom explains how his discussion with restaurateurs and chefs Jeremy King, Tommi Miers and Oisín Rogers fit into the event and broader media, entertainment and culture landscape.

entertainment  5d ago

Hollywood Reporter

UTA’s U.K. Head Moderated a Hospitality Panel at SXSW London: Here’s Why

Darnell Strom explains how his discussion with restaurateurs and chefs Jeremy King, Tommi Miers and Oisín Rogers fit into the event and broader media, entertainment and culture landscape.

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Being Towards Death review – Chinese hospital comedy drama uses plucky patients to ask big questions

A debt-laden caregiver attempting suicide is the catalyst for him finding new meaning to life from a ward of terminally ill patients in touching ensemble drama‘You know the law of entropy? Life is a process of constant decay,” ssays a doctor in this Chinese hospital comedy drama – but not that you’d know it from the gabbling, frenetic first half-hour of director Chen Sicheng’s death-fixated film. Being Towards Death kicks off with caregiver Xiaobing (Jiang Long) about to throw himself off the ro

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

‘Peaky Blinders is our Nutcracker’: how Rambert are dragging dance into the present – and their message for Timothée Chalamet

How does a 100-year-old dance company face the 21st century? For Rambert’s Benoit Swan Pouffer the answer is combining innovation with popular adaptations such as the Brummie crime sagaOn 15 June 1926, the Lyric theatre in Hammersmith played host to “an engaging little ballet” called A Tragedy of Fashion, a “chic trifle” according to the press, that had been first concocted round a west London dinner table. Yet it turned out to be a momentous moment in the course of British dance. The show was p

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

‘I would draw blood’: Jemaine Clement and Nicola Walker’s wild wrongcom about sexual betrayal

What if your best mate slept with your child? The stars of Alice and Steve, the new taboo-busting comedy about friends at war, open up about drug-taking, iffy sex – and why British jokes are so hard to understandAlice and Steve, the new “wrongcom” starring Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement, starts like the story of a lifelong friendship between two 50ish exes. They went out for a short time, a million years ago, and ever since have been platonically inseparable. In one of the first scenes, Alice

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Krishna review – the mystery of John Tavener’s ‘mystic pantomime’ is why it has been staged

Grange Park Opera, West Horsley, SurreySingers and orchestra toiled admirably with this posthumous world premiere about the Hindu god, complete with inflatable deadly serpent. But the work feels straight from the 19th-century Orientalism playbookThe first thing you should know about John Tavener’s 2005 opera Krishna is that it is actually a “mystical pantomime”. If that very idea provokes even the faintest amusement, this is not the country-house opera for you. The second thing you should know i

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Simeon Barclay review – shut out by the gates of a drab modern Britain

John Hansard Gallery, SouthamptonFarewell Sweet Innocence references cinema, football, music and Windrush – it’s about trying to fit in, but always falling short, even as a Turner-nominated artistThere’s that old Marxist (Groucho, not Karl) saying about refusing to join any club that would have you as a member. Simeon Barclay takes that idea one step further in his work, because he knows that even if the club would have him, he’d never be truly accepted anyway. He calls his show in Southampton “

entertainment  5d ago

Variety

Chinese Hit ‘Dear You’ Sets Global Theatrical Run Via Damai Entertainment

“Dear You,” the Teochew-dialect drama that has become one of China’s defining box office stories of 2026, is heading to international markets starting June 18, with Damai Entertainment – the distributor formerly known as Alibaba Pictures – handling the worldwide theatrical release. Directed by Lan Hongchun, the family drama follows Xiaowei, a young grandson who […]

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Mind-melting MC Escher, mesmerising Marilyn and the greatness of Glasgow – the week in art

Escher’s eye-popping visions enter the video dimension, Pan-Africanism pulls in the big names and agent provocateur Julio Le Parc hits the UK – all in your weekly dispatchMC EscherThe great Dutch artist of eye-popping, brain-melting visual paradox gets a rich retrospective of his prints, with video, music and installations adding to the fun. • Somerset House, London, until 6 September Continue reading...

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

The best recent poetry – review roundup

Haunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph; Selected Poems by Leontia Flynn; Sparrow on the Rooftop by Rachel Long; You Must Live: New Poetry from Palestine, edited by Jorie Graham; Melete by Jennifer Lee Tsai; Somebody Should Have Pressed Record by Galia AdmoniHaunting the Black Air by Anthony Joseph (Bloomsbury, £12.99) Joseph’s follow-up to the TS Eliot prize-winning Sonnets for Albert sees his poetic approach become more radical. He pays homage to avant garde writers such as Will Alexander an

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

How Marvel deals with Doctor Doom is make or break for the MCU. No one wants a watered-down Tony Stark

The hooded supervillain is a scientist, a sorcerer, a monarch and a mummy’s boy – Robert Downey Jr’s Doom should be all these things and more, radiating history, magic and the biggest egoThe problem with building the next stage of your superhero franchise around Doctor Doom is that nobody really knows if he is Marvel’s Darth Vader, or just the guy from those terrible 20th Century Fox films. We wouldn’t even be getting Doom in the forthcoming Avengers: Doomsday if Marvel’s original post-Thanos ma

entertainment  5d ago

Variety

Brad Pitt on Set of Plan B-Produced ‘Isle of Man’ Movie as Filming Kicks Off During Motorcycle Race

Brad Pitt is on set of the Amazon MGM Studios motorcycle race movie “Isle of Man,” starring Channing Tatum and Eve Hewson, on which cameras have started to roll just as the iconic race is taking place. Shooting has been underway for roughly a week on the small island nation in the Irish Sea island, where […]

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Taylor Swift: I Knew It, I Knew You review – giddy up! Song for Toy Story cowgirl Jessie is Swift’s best in years

Full of handcrafted care and the rootsy soul of her country origins, this gently elated song is a reminder of what fans love about Swift … and the film seriesTaylor Swift does not fear a challenge. She’s broken records then broken those records; taken Grammy snubs as a sign she just has to work harder; mounted probably the most physically exhausting tour of all time. But in writing a song for Toy Story’s cowgirl Jessie, she’s set herself a deranged task: how could anyone outdo Randy Newman’s dev

entertainment  5d ago

Variety

Tragicomedy ‘Black Money for White Nights’ Boarded by Cercamon Ahead of Premiere at Karlovy Vary (EXCLUSIVE)

Cercamon has picked up sales agency duties on tragicomedy “Black Money for White Nights,” which has its world premiere at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in the Crystal Globe Competition. The Bulgaria-Greece co-production is directed by Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, and written by Grozeva, Valchanov and Decho Taralezhkov. Marina, 65, a maternity nurse, and […]

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

‘They are disturbing the dead’: reconstructing the site of the forgotten first genocide of the 20th century

At least 3,000 Herero and Nama people died in a German concentration camp at Shark Island, Namibia. A new forensic exhibition in Berlin is using digital technology to unearth how colonisers scarred a landscape, and a communityVisiting the Namibian port town of Lüderitz in late 2024, I came across a small museum run by descendants of German settlers. Alongside imperial German flags and memorabilia, it displayed artefacts of the Herero tribe that had been recovered from nearby Shark Island. What w

entertainment  5d ago

Variety

Switzerland’s Sister Distribution Boards ‘The Indies’ From ‘They Will Be Dust’ Producers: ’It’s Not Character-Driven but Image-Driven’ (EXCLUSIVE)

After serving as a minority partner to Spain’s Lastor Media on the Toronto-winning Spanish pic “They Will Be Dust,” established Swiss banner Alina Film is majority-producing with Lastor the period road movie “The Indies,” (“Les Indes”) which will be sneak-peeked as a work in progress at ECAM Forum co-production market in Madrid, running June 9-11. […]

entertainment  5d ago

Hollywood Reporter

“It Was All Greek to Me”: Why Producer Miranda Bailey Went Int’l to Back an Indie Film From Greece

The 'Swiss Army Man' producer just couldn't say no to 'The Boy With the Light-Blue Eyes,' the genre-bending feature directorial debut of Thanasis Neofotistos, which just premiered at SXSW London.

entertainment  5d ago

The Guardian Culture

Zoh Amba: Eyes Full review – raw, rugged country rock also has real tenderness

(Matador)Better known as a formidable free jazz saxophonist, these thrashing songs about the artist’s Tennessee childhood home share a similar genre-pushing intensityOn opening track OCD, Zoh Amba stops a twinkling, rootsy guitar melody and starts over, searching for the right way to tell the story of a boy diagnosed with “dreamin’ all the time”. Amba lands on a queasy combination of empathy and conspiracy (“said that mind needs fixin’ / gunna end up like everybody”), churned up by thrashing, vi

entertainment  5d ago