Entertainment and Culture 1

The annual Academy Award nominees luncheon is my favourite part of an otherwise excruciatingly dull affair – and the group picture reveals more than any winners list could As you will all be aware, the Oscars aren’t particularly fun. They are an overlong celebration of underwatched films that take place in a room where, by the end of the evening, the bulk of those present have been told that they aren’t good enough to win anything. The whole thing is excruciating.But you know what’s much better than the Oscars? The annual Oscars nominees luncheon. This is when everyone who has been nominated gathers for a nice lunch. It isn’t televised, so nobody has to be on their best behaviour. No awards are handed out, so technically everyone invited is an equal. And, best of all, they take a class photo of everyone at the end. Continue reading…

‘In Florida, people were told to keep the length of a baby alligator apart. So I included a character wearing an alligator mask in my pandemic-themed masked ball’When Covid started, everybody was talking about masks. I thought about the face coverings we all had to wear, and I thought about masks more widely. I researched masked balls and carnival masks and read a lot about the many outbreaks of plague in Venice starting in the 14th century, and about pandemics in general.This photograph, Danse Macabre, was inspired by Covid. If you take a close look at the paper lamps hanging from the ceiling, you’ll see some Covid-19 viruses smuggled in among them. In the middle of the scene, a doctor in a plague mask – the type still sold at carnival in Venice – is dancing with the rat that caused the plague. The couple on the left reference the fact that the Bolsonaro-led Brazilian government at the time of the pandemic was accused of allowing many Indigenous people to die unnecessarily [he denied any wrongdoing]. So those two deal with colonialism – the woman in the yellow hat represents an Indigenous person, the guy she’s dancing with is wearing a mask with the face of Pedro de Alvarado, a Spanish conquistador responsible for massacring Indigenous populations in Guatemala in the 16th century. Continue reading…

Classical music’s blessing is also its curse: you’ve simply got to pay it attention. Plus: No wonder Rossini was an Olympics hit – he invented discoIf you’re reading this, you too may know the essential power of the music we call classical to chart and change your life. That power of connection and empathy is among the miracles of human creativity, and it’s something that everyone has a right to. That is despite decades of underfunding of music education and the whole sector in this country; despite generations of the astounding innovation of its practitioners being ignored by government after government; despite the ravages of technology companies who would replace human-created music with rights-free AI given half a chance. With all of those pressures, and more, it’s no wonder that classical music is in a psychological state of defensiveness and a perennial struggle for relevance, and ends up trying to do things on terms that are set by the streaming companies and social media, not by the art form or the artists themselves.Classical’s blessing and curse is that it demands our unmediated attention and our time, making it unfit for purpose in the second quarter of the 21st century. What to do with hour-long symphonies and evening-length operas in a cultural feedback loop of ever-shorter attention spans and a media landscape in thrall to the playlist, the reel, the image, the moment? Who has time for time? Continue reading…

Sixteen authors – including Lea Ypi, Lyse Doucet and Barbara Demick – are in contention for the £30,000 award, launched to address a historic gender imbalance in nonfiction prizesArundhati Roy, Sarah Perry and Lea Ypi are among the writers longlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction.Sixteen authors are in contention to win the £30,000 award, launched in 2024 to address the persistent gender imbalance in UK nonfiction prize winners. Continue reading…

Dorfman theatre, LondonA financier facing corruption charges is reunited with his son in this high-concept mishmash of screwball comedy and financial thrillerThe National Theatre is certainly mixing it up. A debut writer was showcased on its biggest stage last autumn (Nima Taleghani with Bacchae). Now a canonical playwright is in a space associated with the new and edgy – although Terence Rattigan fans may not recognise his lesser-performed 1963 play.It charts the fall of a megalomaniacal Romanian financier, Gregor Antonescu (Ben Daniels), and his reunion with his estranged son, Basil Anthony (Laurie Kynaston). The latter has changed his name and is trying to make it as a songwriter when Gregor re-enters his life, beleaguered with corruption charges and on the verge of exposure. Continue reading…