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The career of Richard Burton seemed mythic at the time, and more so in retrospect. In Pedro Almodóvar’s latest movie The Room Next Door, Julianne Moore’s character is even shown reading Erotic Vagrancy, Roger Lewis’s account of Burton’s then-adulterous relationship with Elizabeth Taylor in the early 60s, the title taken from Pope John XXIII’s extraordinary … Read more
Louise Courvoisier grew up the daughter of farmers in France’s eastern Jura region and, by the time she was 15, was desperate to leave this backwater. So she chose a boarding school 100km away in Besançon that happened to offer a cinema course. “I really needed to get out, for sure,” says the director, now … Read more
Ani DiFranco may be the only musician ever to have tired Prince into submission. When they jammed in 1999, he and his band called it quits after four hours while the Buffalo songwriter kept dancing. “After being with her, it dawned on me why she’s like that,” Prince said. “She’s never had a ceiling over … Read more
Fast-forward on a tape and whole worlds open up. For Jen Byrne, the creator of legendary Weimar cabaret singer Bernie Dieter, it came at the end of her own christening video: filmed in Germany where she was initially raised. Fast-forwarding past the usual scenes – moments in the church, family celebrating afterwards, drinking champagne and … Read more
We first meet Jane O in the consulting room of Henry Byrd, a New York psychiatrist. Jane, a 38-year-old librarian, is neat, quiet, outwardly unremarkable. She sits without saying anything, then gets up and leaves. Her visit has lasted just 14 minutes and Henry fears he will not see her again. He detects in her … Read more
Oh man. I really thought this was going to be the one. I thought Stacey & Joe, the new reality show starring Stacey Solomon and Joe Swash and their 800 children (five) would let me escape and forget the troubles of the world. Because I like Joe Swash (for it is impossible to dislike Joe … Read more
Meet Daisy and Mia. One is working class, the other middle class. One is proud of that, the other embarrassed. Between them they like pints, artisan coffee, ballet and meal deals. A folk song about labour will be performed by one while the other will do a French-inspired mime. Which of them feels skint and … Read more
Sam Mendes has announced the cast for his colossal four-film Beatles extravaganza: Harris Dickinson as John, Paul Mescal as Paul, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George – and to tumultuous acclaim he brought his Fab Four on stage at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, a now well-established affair in the film … Read more
A carved stone pangolin clings to the top of the tower, its scaly tail curled into the crevice of a cornice, as if holding on for dear life. It crowns an arresting arrival to Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, the anteater taking its place on this skyline of slender steeples and gurning gargoyles, up … Read more
Marathon Dance Relief, the latest intriguing work by Nicole Wermers, focuses on the Depression-era craze for endurance dancing competitions, mainly in the US in the 1920s and 30s, where cavorting couples put themselves through brutal, sometimes week-long contests in the hope of winning prizes equivalent to a year’s salary, if they could be the last … Read more