Hollywood Reporter

Mark Hamill’s ‘Star Wars’ Lightsaber Smashes Predictions and Sells for Record Sum at Auction

Heritage Auctions confirmed that the original screen-used Luke Skywalker lightsaber sold for a whopping $3.75 million, setting a new world auction record for a screen-used ‘Star Wars’ prop.

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘A sublime, breezy confection’: writers on their 2026 songs of the summer

The annual rundown of Guardian writers picking their most played tracks of the season goes from club-ready pop to sunny tech houseCheck out a Spotify playlist of the choicesKim Petras’ greatest song to date is also the best outsider country song in recent memory: if Ethel Cain and Lana Del Rey could ever put the beef behind them and duet, the dusty gutter romance of Jeep is exactly how you’d want it to sound. The song creates a flyover state love story in a strangely effective union of hyperpop

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

Sam Neill’s Cause of Death Revealed

“Jurassic Park” star Sam Neill died of pneumonia, his agent confirmed on Thursday. The BBC reported that Philip Grenz, Neill’s longtime agent, decided to reveal the cause after speaking to the actor’s family in order to correct “inaccurate and outright falsehoods” in the media. Neill, who died on Monday in Sydney, Australia at the age […]

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

Arundhati Roy on Beatles, AI and Indie Filmmaking at London Indian Film Festival

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy discussed the unauthorized use of Beatles songs in “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones,” the growing presence of artificial intelligence in cinema, and the handmade aesthetic of independent filmmaking during a Q&A at BFI Southbank on July 15, following the U.K. premiere of the film’s 4K restoration. On the […]

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

Hal Williams, Actor on ‘227’ and ‘Sanford and Son,’ Dies at 91

He also played a 'Private Benjamin' drill sergeant in the film and TV versions and had a dramatic turn on 'The Waltons.'

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Renzo Piano’s giant glass cube towers over the rest of the Stirling prize’s samey brick-built shortlist

Coming from the same developer as the Shard, London’s latest trophy building may be 54 storeys shorter than envisaged but should rise to building of the year If Irvine Sellar, the larger-than-life developer who gave London the 95-storey hypodermic pinnacle of the Shard, had had his way, the UK’s tallest building would have been joined by a sibling: a 72-storey residential tower soaring above Paddington Station, the pair of leviathans winking conspiratorially at each other across the capital. In

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

Barry Ward Loved Working on ‘Everybody Digs Bill Evans’ and Chats About His Roles in ‘The Flying Mountain’ and Netflix Series ‘Grown Ups’

The busy Irish actor was at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival and made time to discuss his recent and upcoming work in film and TV, as well as Ireland's production boom.

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

Will Ferrell’s Lackluster Golf Comedy ‘The Hawk’ Is No ‘Talladega Nights’: TV Review

I am a child of the 2000s (and specifically San Diego), which is to say that the work of Will Ferrell (and specifically “Anchorman”) is deeply important to me. Star vehicles like “Step Brothers” and “Talladega Nights” — also, did I mention “Anchorman”? — epitomized the bluster and blissful ignorance of Bush-era masculinity, somehow even more […]

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Hollywood Reporter

‘The Hawk’ Review: Will Ferrell and a Stellar Supporting Cast Are Wasted in Netflix’s Whiff of a Golf Comedy

Molly Shannon, Jimmy Tatro and Luke Wilson co-star in a show that will remind you of better golf comedies and Ferrell-fronted sports stories.

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Fleabag at 10: did Phoebe Waller-Bridge usher in a wave of female-fronted series – or straitjacket them?

The confessional classic opened the floodgates for a generation of brilliant female showrunners. But as risk-averse streamers tighten their purse strings, is the industry forcing women’s stories back into a box?Ten years ago, Phoebe Waller-Bridge locked eyes with the camera and asked her audience: “Do I have a massive arsehole?” An unexpected punchline to a monologue about a booty call that went surprisingly – and literally – south, it announced Waller-Bridge as a new star of British telly. The

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘I felt Holden was talking to me alone’: The Catcher in the Rye at 75

JD Salinger’s wry, subversive classic inspired novelist Joseph O’Connor to be a writer. He reflects on why this story of a disaffected teenager remains as fresh and transgressive as everIn 1981, when I was 17, my first girlfriend gave me a paperback of her dad’s favourite novel. I’d never heard of it despite living in a home full of books. My parents loved the work of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, John le Carré, Dickens. So did I. But encountering the first sentence of JD 

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey used occupied land as a film set. That feels like a betrayal | Mohamed Sleiman Labat

The decision to shoot in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, where the Indigenous people can’t tell their stories without fear of imprisonment, helps erase our own brutal journey• Peter Bradshaw’s five star review• A classicist’s verdictThe simple act of holding a camera in my homeland of Western Sahara can be a crime. When Sahrawi film-makers and journalists attempt to document everyday life under Moroccan occupation, they can often end up in prison cells. For the Moroccan regime, a camera in the

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

‘The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer’ Boarded by Autlook Ahead of Locarno Premiere as Clip Debuts (EXCLUSIVE)

Autlook has boarded as world sales agent for documentary “The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer,” which will have its world premiere in the Filmmakers of the Present Competition at Locarno Film Festival. Variety debuts a clip from the film here. The film was partially financed by Mubi, which has retained U.K./Ireland and North America rights. […]

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Sweeney Todd review – Sondheim’s demon barber is still a cut above

Birmingham RepWith tremendous singing from Ramin Karimloo and Meow Meow, Joe Murphy’s superb staging of the story is full of dark gothic humourStephen Sondheim was drawn to fairytales – and not just in the storybook theme of Into the Woods. The origins of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, lie in Victorian melodrama, but in the hands of the composer, working with book writer Hugh Wheeler in response to a play by Christopher Bond, it is steeped in the tropes of folklore.The story of

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Emergencies on planet Earth: images from the climate crisis – in pictures

From fierce flooding and escaped pigs to birds that can’t fly due to the weight of plastic in their stomachs, mankind’s biggest challenges are on stark display at Summit Photo 2026 Continue reading...

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

Up All Night by Imogen Willetts review – a seductive history of going out

From 18th-century pleasure gardens to Studio 54, the story of nightlife in all its hedonistic – and political – gloryIn this fabulous alternative history of the modern world, the academic and “party historian” Imogen Willetts looks at the last 500 years of civilisation through the sometimes blurry lenses of its after-dark scenes, with fascinating results. She begins by trying to capture what it feels like to go on a big night out, focusing on a phenomenon that, in 1912, the sociol

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

TV tonight: Jennifer Garner and Chloë Sevigny star in glossy girlie trip drama

Five wealthy women set off for a weekend where everyone has something to hide. Plus: Dan Snow follows in Odysseus’s wake. Here’s what to watch this evening9pm, Sky AtlanticThis glossy drama about wealthy women who head off on a girls’ weekend is the perfect chaser for anyone who raced through Two Weeks in August. After her husband dies, celebrity cook Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) organises a bougie trip with four friends: the school mom, the college bestie, the sort-of sister and the fan who re

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

Hal Williams, ‘227’ Star and ‘Sanford and Son’ Regular, Dies at 91

Hal Williams, the TV veteran who appeared in American sitcom staples like “227” and “Sanford and Son,” had died, according to his manager. He was 91. “227” ran from 1985 to 1990, and followed a group of middle-aged tenants living together in an apartment building. Williams starred as Lester Jenkins, who, in the show, was […]

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

The Guardian Culture

‘The minute I had success, I stopped taking drugs’: John Waters on 60 years of screen carnage

As Hairspray and his ‘angriest movie’ Desperate Living are rereleased, the ‘Pope of Trash’ reflects on dead dogs, dirty rats, ‘that lunatic RFK’ and why there are no novelty dances any moreJohn Waters still remembers the day his 1988 comedy Hairspray was awarded a PG certificate. “It was horrible,” he says.Until then, Waters, christened the “Pope of Trash” by the novelist William S Burroughs, was notorious for filming the unfilmable. In Eat Your Makeup, he recreated JFK’s assassination only five

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026

Variety

‘Motor City’ Review: Potsy Ponciroli’s Audacious Thriller — a Scorsese Opera without Dialogue — Announces the Arrival of a Startling Voice

At times, "Motor City" is like a silent movie directed by Scorsese. It draws us in because it’s got a glittering underworld-opera surface, but also because the audience needs to use its noodle a bit to participate in the film’s telling.

entertainment  Jul 16, 2026