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She taught herself guitar in her teens by listening to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan – and her talent would later prompt BB King to call her the “best damn slide player working today” and Bon Iver to say she’s “our greatest living singer”. As she goes back on tour around the UK and Europe, … Read more

Cast your mind back, lightsaber-wielding relics of a certain age, to the first time you saw the 1977 theatrical cut of Star Wars. Was it in a cinema, surrounded by gaggles of wide-eyed space cadets astounded by this glittering, laser-blasted disco ball? Or perhaps on a VHS recorded off ITV’s small-screen premiere in 1982? Perhaps, … Read more

It’s the smell that hits you first. One hundred and seventy years of slide grease and valve oil hang pungent in the air. Outside, it’s just another old West Yorkshire building, the sandstone blasted dark by wind, rain and industry. Inside, the walls are lined with certificates and plaques. I’m in what was once the … Read more

Justin Vernon would rather not be doing any of this. Releasing a new Bon Iver album, promoting it. He absolutely isn’t going to tour it. “I don’t need to do this any more,” he says. “I want to be done with this whole thing. But I am dead serious about these songs. That’s how much I … Read more

You can understand why it might take an actor a while to tackle another dramatic lead role on television when their first was a life-changing, career-defining part in a critically acclaimed landmark TV drama that ran for eight superlative seasons. But it is 10 years since Mad Men ended and only now is Jon Hamm … Read more

The Cannes film festival selection has been unveiled by its director Thierry Frémaux, with all its auteur heavyweights and cineaste silverback gorillas, including new work by Kelly Reichardt, Julia Ducournau, Ari Aster, Wes Anderson, Joachim Trier and Carla Simón. Tom Cruise’s final Mission: Impossible movie is showing out of competition; Robert De Niro is getting … Read more

Ernest Borgnine had the sort of face that suggested he was never young – or, at the very least, that he always looked older than he was. In truth, Borgnine didn’t get his start as a screen actor until his early-to-mid 30s, having spent his young adulthood serving in the navy after high school and … Read more

It seems weirdly fitting that Pulp have premiered their first album in 24 years with a song that appears to fret about the validity of returning at all. Of all the alt-rock artists hoisted to mainstream fame in the Britpop era, they were the ones who seemed least comfortable with the kind of attention it … Read more

20. Moonraker (End Title) (1979) Shirley Bassey apparently hated this Bond theme, protesting that the lyrics were nonsensical. She never performed it live. It’s certainly not up to previous standards, but the disco version that accompanies the film’s end credits is worth hearing – better than her attempt to rejig This Is My Life for … Read more

It happened slowly at first, then all at once: people asking me “are you watching The Pitt?” As in the medical drama streaming on Max, released at the beginning of January and set over one hellish shift at an overburdened emergency room in Pittsburgh. The question has increased in frequency and urgency over the past … Read more