Action legend Simon West (the director of Con Air, the first Lara Croft and The Mechanic) has put together a pretty moderate comedy-thriller with screenwriter Greg Johnson; the collective star power in its (undoubtedly) impressive cast isn’t quite strong enough to make it come alive. It is set in Belfast and Northern Ireland — perhaps … Read more
‘We’re serving a really nice dish called metal tikka masala,” jokes Bloodywood guitarist Jayant Bhadula. “It’s metal but with so many spices that it’ll overwhelm your senses. You will headbang and you will end up dancing with us.” This is the tongue-in-cheek mission statement of one of metal’s most original bands. Formed in 2016, Bloodywood … Read more
Over the last few months, the makers of a popular card game have been wrestling with the byzantine process that surrounds video game age classifications. Age ratings are intended to help parents determine whether or not a game is appropriate for their children. But in practice, an erroneous label doesn’t just mislead consumers – it … Read more
It’s so soon after this year’s Oscars ceremony that there may still be parties going on and with Anora, a film largely set in the sauced early hours, being the big winner, they might be going on until next weekend. But as foolish as it may seem, here we are making our annual too-soon predictions … Read more
There was a time, 20 or so years ago, when it seemed as if TV music supervisors were among the most important people when it came to shaping public tastes. There were, as yet, no video or music streaming services, so music featured in a hit show could blow up as a result. One music … Read more
On Monday, ABC said the Oscars audience declined by about 8 percent this year compared with last year, citing Nielsen data. Well, it turns out the awards show did not suffer from an audience decline after all, the network said on Tuesday. The Academy Awards attracted 19.7 million viewers, strong enough to eclipse last year’s … Read more
Pensioners take their evening stroll on an elevated walkway, surrounded by lush thickets of bamboo, as a game of five-a-side football kicks off on a sunken pitch below. Around them, forming a huge C-shaped courtyard, rises a five-storey stack of streets in the sky, where signs advertise everything from yoga and dance studios to skincare … Read more
Selwyn Raab, an investigative reporter for The New York Times and other news organizations who in exacting detail explored the Mafia’s many tentacles, and whose doggedness helped lead to the exoneration of men wrongly convicted of notorious 1960s killings, died on Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 90. His son-in-law, Matthew Goldstein, a Times reporter, said … Read more
In 2019, the Yale historian David Blight won a Pulitzer prize, for his monumental biography of Frederick Douglass. In 2020, Blight was beginning work on his next book, about the life of the writer and civil rights activist James Weldon Johnson. Then, his college president called. “Peter Salovey called me up, in the depths of … Read more
One of the oldest indie labels in Britain sits down a muddy lane on an old RAF site, less than a mile from the sea, half an hour from the mountains of Eryri. Founded in 1969, Sain – meaning sound in Welsh, pronounced (in English) like “sign” – is an unusual label, host to a … Read more