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Maestro review: Bradley Cooper’s Bernstein biopic is a hit

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There is one obvious problem, though. Cooper has been criticised for wearing a prosthetic nose, a contentious choice for a non-Jewish actor playing a Jewish character. Personally, I’d argue that prosthetic noses are so distracting on the big screen that they should never be used unless someone is playing either Pinocchio or Cyrano de Bergerac. But the make-up artist, Kazu Hiro, does such an expert job that it’s easy to forget that the nose isn’t Cooper’s own. And when the elderly Bernstein talks to interviewers in the film’s framing scenes, he has some of the best old-age make-up I’ve ever seen.

Still, Maestro is not just the Bradley Cooper show. In the credits he takes second billing, ceding the top spot to Mulligan. The choice doesn’t really make sense: Bernstein is undoubtedly the central character. But Mulligan’s performance as the loyal but tortured Felicia is a sparkling tour de force, especially in the lengthy, complicated scenes in which the dialogue overlaps with documentary-like naturalism, but is also enunciated with the precision of the most sophisticated screwball comedy. She has never been better. Apparently there is some debate as to whether a woman should be addressed as a “Maestro” or a “Maestra”, but whichever term you prefer, Mulligan definitely qualifies.

★★★★☆

Maestro is released on 20 December on Netflix.

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September 2, 2023
Poor Things review: Emma Stone is ‘perfectly cast’ in this truly bizarre female Frankenstein story

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A more significant change is that the tone is far more fantastical than it is in the novel. Gray balanced the strangeness of his gothic yarn with deeply researched descriptions of the injustices of 19th-Century society, and that’s what gave the book much of its ironic humour and satirical power. Lanthimos, on the other hand, has transplanted Poor Things to a steam-punk wonderland of garish colours, masked-ball costumes, squawking music, and obviously artificial, picture-book backgrounds: imagine a Terry Gilliam film multiplied by a Wes Anderson film and you’ll have some idea of the lavish freakishness in store. In the process, the narrative loses some of its emotion and a lot of its politics. Traces of Gray’s views on feminism and socialism are still visible, but it can be hard to spot them amid the endless sex scenes and the retina-scorching production design.

If you’re not a fan of the novel, Lanthimos’s wildly idiosyncratic approach won’t bother you, but you may still find Poor Things off-puttingly over-the-top and self-indulgent. Cut off from reality and rambling in structure, the 141 minutes don’t exactly race by. Speaking of self-indulgence, Ruffalo’s attempt at a Terry-Thomas-style English accent is so catastrophic as to be almost unbearable. Overall, though, it’s easy to forgive any film which is as gleefully excessive as this one. Lanthimos may get carried away, but the results are daringly outrageous and often hilarious. He goes too far in his experiments, just as Godwin does. But, as several of the characters argue, if you want to see the best and worst of life, too far is where you have to go.

★★★★☆

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September 1, 2023
Why John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is the ultimate spy novel

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Set against the backdrop of a divided, post-war Berlin, the novel tells the story of disillusioned British agent Alec Leamas. Leamas has failed in his mission as head of the West Berlin office of the British Secret Service, and after witnessing the murder of his last undercover operative, Riemick, as he tries to cross the border, he returns to Britain, and requests leave. However, the mysterious Control, the head of “The Circus” – Le Carré’s fictional nickname for MI6, based on its offices’ setting in London’s Cambridge Circus – offers him one last mission before retirement.

Leamas is to purportedly defect to East Germany in order to sow disinformation regarding enemy party member Hans-Dieter Mundt, the man responsible for Riemick’s murder. But, as with all espionage, nothing is what it seems, and, as the mission becomes complicated by Leamas’ cover story, namely his relationship with British Communist Party secretary Liz Gold, tension mounts as to whether he will complete it – or if he is really even meant to.

Amidst the ideological battleground of the Cold War, The Spy transcended the conventional espionage thriller, revealing the raw, gritty reality of field operations undertaken during the period of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie and smuggled microdots. However, Le Carré was less interested in merely dramatising the various nuts and bolts of basic tradecraft – though he certainly did so in more detail than any other writer at the time – and was more concerned with questioning the very act of spying itself, emphasising the amoral techniques used in the invisible battle between East and West intelligence services.

How it manages to be so authentic

Le Carré’s background as a real-life intelligence worker could be felt in the authenticity of his work, especially The Spy, as well as in its decidedly pessimistic tone. Born David Cornwell, Le Carré served in British intelligence from the late 1940s, when, for his National Service, he was stationed in the Austrian city of Graz; with his expertise in German, he helped to interrogate defectors from East Germany.

He then returned to study at Oxford, where he became an informer for MI5 on Communist student groups, before joining the agency full time when he left. And it was when working in the dirty world of phone-tapping and break-ins that he began writing – under a pseudonym, as was a service requirement.

He transferred to MI6 in 1960 and became attached to the embassy in Bonn. The Spy was the last novel he published before he was, like many, compromised by double agent Kim Philby’s infamous 1963 betrayal of his fellow British secret service officers. Philby revealed their covers to the KGB, ending le Carré’s intelligence career for good.

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August 31, 2023
Ferrari review: Adam Driver’s latest is ‘stuck in the slow lane’

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The film’s two most vivid sequences involve horrific accidents that are guaranteed to have audiences gasping, so it doesn’t fudge how dangerous the sport can be. Ferrari’s new recruit, Alfonso de Portago (Gabriel Leone), only gets the job after watching his predecessor hurtle to his gory demise. But no one seems to mind. They shrug the fatalities off – and the film shrugs off the fatalities, too, which in one hideous case feels cruelly disrespectful. Perhaps Mann is simply reflecting the callous motor-racing mindset of the period, but Ferrari’s team-members are a weirdly sleepy, passionless bunch. They’re all so unenthusiastic that you may feel entitled to ask why the drivers risk life and limb, and why Enzo himself is so intent on winning. Why, having lost a brother and son to illness, is he so relaxed about sending young men (and sometimes unlucky spectators) to their deaths?

Who knows? For all his legendary achievements, he comes across as a grumpy provincial middle manager. Cruz gets to clump around town scowling at people, but she doesn’t convey what Laura thinks about the company she helps to run. And Jack O’Connell pops up as an English driver, Peter Collins, but he is given almost nothing to say except the immortal line, “Thank you, old bean.” To put it in the most appropriate terms: it’s hard to see what drives any of them. The racing sequences have enough energy and jeopardy to raise the pulse rate, but the rest of Ferrari… well, surely a film about high-speed cars shouldn’t pootle along as slowly as this one does.

★★★☆☆

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August 31, 2023
Eight startling images of life under the Mafia

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(Image credit: Letizia Battaglia)

As a group photography show about life in Palermo is staged, three of the Sicilian capital’s natives – including a newspaper photographer – tell Harvey Day what it was like to record the Mafia’s terror.

I

If you were a newspaper photographer working in Palermo at the height of the Sicilian Mafia’s power, you had to get used to being woken up by telephone calls in the middle of the night. There’s been a murder, your editor would tell you, before giving you an address so you could rush to the scene.

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Dashing to cover a killing or a police arrest was dangerous enough, but worse was being dispatched to photograph a Mafia funeral. Unlike a journalist, who could blend into a crowd of mourners, being a photographer meant standing on the frontline, exposing yourself with your camera in front of angry family members. And when you left your assignment, you had to be cautious to make sure no one had followed you home.

Photographer Franco Zecchin remembers this life well. From the late 1970s, he worked intimately with legendary photographer Letizia Battaglia documenting the deadly gangland warfare between rival families of the Sicilian Mafia – also known as the Cosa Nostra – and the bloodshed that spilled out on to the streets of the city. The brutal period is remembered as la mattanza, Italian for slaughter.

Italian photographers Franco Zecchin and Letizia Battaglia in Palermo in 1976 (Credit: Alberto Roveri/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images)

Zecchin and Battaglia – who died in 2022 – were also a couple, and in love. Together they organised a group of freelance photographers – mostly young people from Palermo hungry to learn the craft – to gather images for the daily, left-wing newspaper, L’Ora, which was famous for its investigations into the Mafia.

And their work was fast-paced photojournalism, so their photographic style about daily life in the city – and even the printing and processing of the images – had to be swift, in order to make the next edition. Sicily was at the centre of international press attention at the time, and the photographers had to be on call 24 hours a day. Going to the cinema meant leaving a note with the box-office attendant to alert them if they received a call from the paper.

Zecchin and Battaglia faced real physical threat – getting roughed up or having their cameras broken – and there were times when they covered five murders a day. For Zecchin, the most chilling moment came when Battaglia received a menacing, anonymous letter warning her to get out of the city immediately – and not to return.

Letter received by Battaglia warning her to leave (Credit: Archivio Letizia Battaglia – Palermo)

But Battaglia, who would go on to receive international acclaim for her work, was undeterred. “It’s a question of character,” Zecchin tells BBC Culture. “When she was convinced of something, she went in that direction without waiting or reflecting too much about the consequence.” Despite – or perhaps because of – this danger, their life together in Palermo was “an adventure”, says Zecchin.

Battaglia and Zecchin’s work is currently on display at Fondazione Merz in Turin, alongside the photography of Enzo Sellerio, Fabio Sgroi and Lia Pasqualino. The exhibition, Palermo Mon Amour, traces Palermo’s public life from the 1950s to 1992 – both the violence and quiet, everyday moments.

The head of Palermo’s police Flying Squad, Boris Giuliano, at the scene of a murder in Palermo in 1978 – he was killed by the Mafia in 1979 (Credit: Letizia Battaglia)

Curator Valentina Greco – a Palermo native – tells BBC Culture that being born in the city at this time “was to be born in a very violent period”.

And life under the Mafia continues to fascinate, with 2023 seeing the announcement of a new Mafia museum in Palermo, as well as British-Italian crime drama The Good Mothers – based on a true story of three women fighting to bring down a Mafia clan from the inside – airing on Disney+.

Palermitan children “shooting” on All Souls’ Day in 1960 (Credit: Enzo Sellerio)

Leoluca Orlando was mayor of Palermo for more than 20 years. And from his childhood onwards, he remembers the city being the capital of the Mafia.

It was “a grey city”, he tells BBC Culture, in which everyone knew about the overwhelming control of the Mafia, but no one talked about it, thanks to a strictly enforced code of silence known as omertà. The Sicilian Mafia killed more than 1,000 people between 1978 and 1983, according to one report.

The arrest of notorious Sicilian Mafia boss Leoluca Bagarella – who had murdered Giuliano – in Palermo in 1980 (Credit: Letizia Battaglia)

And because of his position, Orlando was, at times, considered to be among the “walking dead” of the city – aka, on the Mafia’s kill list. He would have to change his schedule at the last minute to avoid people finding out his location; he lived in a military barracks for a time, and once he and his family even fled to Georgia because the threat was too great.

Enough is enough

Ultimately, it was the infamous 1992 killings of anti-Mafia judges Paolo Borsellino and Giovanni Falcone that began a push for change in Sicily, Orlando says. “The people reacted and said, ‘Basta! Enough is enough!’,” Orlando recalls. “It was really an important moment.”

Thousands of students protesting against the Mafia in Palermo in 1986 (Credit: Fabio Sgroi)

Zecchin recalls the first time he met Battaglia at a drama workshop organised by famed Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski, before they began their work exposing the Sicilian Mafia, Battaglia had brought along her camera and was taking pictures – despite being told that wasn’t allowed. “For the character of Battaglia, this was not something that you respect,” Zecchin remembers with a smile. Battaglia simply asked: “Why?”

After someone ratted her out, Battaglia was asked to hand over her film, which she refused to do. Even though they’d just met, Zecchin came up with a plan to help her: at a shop in the nearby town, he bought a fresh roll of blank film and gave it to Battaglia, telling her to pass it off as her own. She went along with the ruse.

“This made, of course, something between us,” Zecchin says, “and after, became a love story.” A few months later, Zecchin left Milan, his hometown, and joined Battaglia in her native Palermo.

The exhibition, Palermo Mon Amour, traces the city’s public life from the 1950s to 1992 – both the violence and quiet, every-day moments (Credit: Franco Zecchin)

One of the first female photojournalists in Italy, Battaglia once called her work covering the Mafia war “an archive of blood”. Self-taught and armed with a camera and a police radio scanner, she would go on to win many awards, including the prestigious W Eugene Smith prize in 1985. In 2019, a documentary based on her life, Shooting the Mafia, was released.

According to Greco, Battaglia is “one of the icons of Italian photography, without a doubt”. But it wasn’t always easy being a couple of photographers, says Zecchin, explaining they had very different styles. While Battaglia would always seek to provoke a reaction from her subjects – “I am here, I face you, I have a camera” – Zecchin’s own style is more discreet, to “try to keep as silent as possible”.

Letizia Battaglia with a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Palermo in 1986 (Credit: Lia Pasqualino)

In the 1980s, Battaglia – who dealt with her own psychiatric issues, according to Zecchin, and often photographed patients at psychiatric institutions – went on to pursue a career in politics, serving on Palermo’s city council and in the Sicilian Regional Assembly. She hoped her political contribution could be as effective – or more – than her photography.

‘The Godfather is dangerous’

For decades, Sicily and the Sicilian Mafia have captured the imaginations of artists, writers and filmmakers. The most prominent of these, still, is Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 crime classic The Godfather – filmed in part in Sicily – which placed second in BBC Culture’s list of the greatest American films ever made.

But while Mayor Orlando calls The Godfather and its star Marlon Brando “fantastic”, he argues that the legacy of the Coppola movie is “a tragedy for Sicilians”. By creating a message that a Mafia boss like Don Vito Corleone is a good man, Orlando argues, there is a risk that people “forget the Mafiosi are terrible, cruel criminals”.

For decades, the Sicilian Mafia has captured the imaginations of artists, writers and filmmakers, including Francis Ford Coppola who directed The Godfather (Credit: Getty Images)

Zecchin agrees, adding that The Godfather, and other films and TV shows like it, are “dangerous” in their failure to properly show the true, devastating impact on the Mafia’s victims.

For Greco, however, there is a rich world of Palermitan culture that captures the essence of life in the city, from the writing of journalist Giuliana Saladino to the films of Ciprì & Maresco.

White Lotus effect

According to Mayor Orlando, today’s Palermo has become a symbol that change is possible. While the Mafia still exists in Sicily, he says, nowadays living in Palermo “can be exciting and safe”. Indeed, as Orlando explains, Palermo’s Falcone Borsellino Airport – once a hub for Mafiosi transporting money and drugs, and journalists arriving to cover the violence – is instead now filled with tourists.

The ‘White Lotus effect’ – named after the HBO show – means it can be difficult to book a hotel room in Sicily, according to one expert (Credit: Fabio Lovino/HBO)

“Palermo is today a touristic city,” says Orlando. “It wasn’t possible to imagine that when the Mafia governed.” According to one travel expert, the “White Lotus effect” – named after the HBO comedy drama set on the Italian island for its second series – means it can nowadays be difficult to book a hotel room in Sicily.

Palermo is a city that’s been rebuilt time and time again, says Greco, “and that definitely adds to its fascination”.

“It’s a city that has a great sense of love to it,” she adds. “It was once a centre of great violence – but it’s more love right now.”

Palermo Mon Amour runs at the Fondazione Merz, Turin, until 8 October 2023.

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August 30, 2023
Venice Film Festival: Is Hollywood self-destructing?

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And even without the full glitz and glam of US stars, film festivals have already been thriving. This year’s Edinburgh Film Festival saw some of its most famous potential attendees unable to participate due to the strikes, but for the festival’s executive producer Tamara Van Strijthem, that solidarity was a powerful statement. “While it would have been lovely to welcome them, we also totally understand the importance of this industrial action. All film festivals exist to showcase the fruits of filmmakers’ labour, so we mainly want to express solidarity with the screenwriters and performers who are organising for a better outcome for cinema in the future. And even without the influx of Hollywood into Scotland’s capital, the festival found no shortage of enthusiasm for its slate. This year we were glad that 71% of our cinema screenings were sold out, including international and local films, showing there is a real appetite for a broader array of cinema.”

The long-term effects

But beyond the immediacy of what happens at the festivals, the knock-on effect of the strikes is already looking deeply alarming, and will continue to do so until a deal can be found: as well as Challengers and Dune: Part Two moving to 2024, production has stopped on the latest Spider-Verse and Mission: Impossible films, as well as Ridley Scott’s much-anticipated Gladiator 2. In a particularly bad stroke of luck, strikes also reportedly shut down production on mega-hit musical adaptation Wicked, whose first part is slated for release in November 2024, with just a few days of principal photography to go. Certainly, there could be a stark 2024 ahead for Hollywood studios.

The most optimistic way to view the knock-on effects of the strikes would be to hope that the absence of Hollywood studio content opens up space for independent cinema and foreign films to fill the void. But the mainstream US film industry could be doing irreparable damage to itself. As former Paramount and 20th Century Fox CEO Barry Diller told CBS’s Face the Nation programme in July, the strikes continuing, combined with other factors such as the challenges faced by cinemas post-Covid and the huge losses being incurred by streaming platforms, could “potentially produce an absolute collapse of an entire industry”. And no exemptions for festival attendance can rectify that issue.

That cinema is facing such an existential threat right now is a particularly strange state of affairs following the recent meteoric success of “Barbenheimer”, two critically adored films from visionary directors, written with clear, unbridled creativity, and featuring casts of talented movie stars, which strongly contrast with 2023’s series of commercially disappointing sequels and superhero franchise extensions. Certainly, their success would appear to work in the strikers’ favour – for it suggests investing in singular talent is the path to profit. As critic Mary McNamara wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “If the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the studios, thought they could force concessions by continuing to leverage the notion that America is out of the moviegoing business, ‘Barbenheimer’ proved them wrong.”

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August 29, 2023
Why sequins are so exhilarating to wear

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In fact, in the late 15th Century, Leonardo da Vinci sketched out a machine for making sequins. It was an elaborate contraption, black-inked lines illustrating a series of pulleys and wheels that worked together to punch out small metal disks. There is no evidence that this machine was ever actually made, but there is something pleasing in imagining it in motion – a rudimentary form of mass-production that might have sped up the process of turning an elite status symbol into something so widely available as to start losing its lustre.

As fashion curator and lecturer Vanessa Jones puts it, the historic sequins still preserved today are largely found “on really high-end garments from the 15th Century onwards… In the 16th and 17th Century we see [more] of these decorative metal, sequin-esque shapes adorning garments… from wealthy or at least middle-class families”. Now, as she says, “you can pick them up for next to nothing. You can get thousands for a couple of pounds”.

Fashion’s biggest sequin champion

In designer Ashish Gupta’s exhibition Fall in Love and Be More Tender, currently on display at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, London, a wonderful tension emerges between what sequins were, and what they have become today. Born in Delhi and based in London, Gupta’s Ashish label is best known for his sparkling, eye-catching designs that have been worn by figures including Madonna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. The French word “sequin” comes from the Arabic sikka (meaning coin or minting die) and Venetian zecchino (a type of gold coin). In England, they were previously known as “spangles”.

The word itself captures the humble sequin’s early alliances with affluence and artisanal splendour. No better way to prove you have money than to wear it. But the transition from metal to gelatin, followed by further leaps forward, via acetate, mylar and vinyl, transformed sequins from a rare and sparkling commodity to the embodiment of mid-century glamour to a kitschy form of ornamentation that runs the gamut from all-star entertainment (Elton John, Dolly Parton, Tina Turner, legions of drag queens) to everyday celebration (festivalgoers, ardent Christmas party attendees) to children begging their parents for a sugary rush of glitter.

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August 28, 2023
10 churches around the world given amazing new life

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

From a library in Canada to a skatepark in Spain, churches around the world are being reconfigured to serve new purposes. Clare Dowdy selects 10 of the best.

I

In a 19th-Century church built for the British Navy on an island in the Thames Estuary, one cantilevered staircase has been rebuilt, and the other has been conserved as a ruin. For the project’s architect Hugh Broughton, this acts as a metaphor for his thinking behind a new use for this church.

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Completed in 1828, the grade II* listed Sheerness Dockyard Church had languished as a ruin since it was ravaged by fire in 2001. It now has a new lease of life as a workspace hub for young entrepreneurs on the Isle of Sheppey, one of the most deprived parts of Kent in the south of England.

For Broughton, church conversions are a balancing act. “You don’t want to lose all the sense of its history and original function. Nor should its previous use overtly impact its new function and people’s relationship with it,” he tells BBC Culture.

Repurposing Sheerness Dockyard church required a balance between conservation and innovation (Credit: Dirk Linder)

At Sheerness Dockyard Church, the internal brickwork has been coated with a pale wash, to make it disappear into the background, and any remaining pieces of decorative plaser were saved (rather than restored) and pinned back against the wall.

In England, around 20 Church of England churches are closed for worship each year. And in the US, around 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the most recent year data is available, though about 3,000 new churches opened, according to Lifeway Research.

Intentionally awe-inspiring, these historic buildings are often imposing even when they’re shuttered. Some of those that are closed get demolished. The lucky ones are transformed, often by local groups or private owners. How much of their religious flavour remains depends on the state they’re in, the architect’s approach, and the new operator’s needs.

Here are some of the innovative ways churches are being repurposed around the world.

A chapel in Limburg, Belgium has become a studio for architecture firm Klaarchitectuur (Credit: Toon Grobet/ Frozen Moments)

Architect‘s studio, Belgium

Originally built as a monument, this heritage-listed building in Limburg, Belgium, was converted into a chapel in 1872. It’s now architecture firm Klaarchitectuur’s studio, office and a public event space, complete with new roof and offices formed of white boxes. The kitchen area has a gold-toned breakfast bar, intended to resemble an altar. When the architecture firm took it on, it was in disrepair, and they left most of the internal surfaces as they found them.

A monastery in the Loire Valley has been transformed into a hotel and restaurant (Credit: Nicolas Mathéus)

Fontevraud hotel and restaurant, France

Saint-Lazare priory in the Loire Valley is part of the redevelopment of Fontevraud Abbey and the four surrounding priories that make up a monastery complex dating from the Middle Ages. Agence Jouin Manku has transformed the protected interior of Saint-Lazare priory into a hotel and restaurant. The designers introduced custom-designed freestanding furniture to divide spaces in the chapel, chapter house and refectory, and the latter is now a banqueting hall with an 8m-long dining table.

A restaurant in Austin was converted from a 1940s church (Credit: Chase Daniel)

Loro restaurant, US

Loro is a chain of Asian smokehouses. This one is in a 1940s church building in Austin, Texas, and boasts a brick facade with cut-stone window sills, and a high pitched roof. The firm’s design “celebrates the vast sanctuary space, and maintains the existing wooden trusses,” says architect Michael Hsu. The new windows and skylights in the rooves bring in more natural light into the previously dark interior.

A church on the Isle of Sheppey in the UK has been repurposed to create a community hub (Credit: Dirk Linder)

Community hub, UK

Sheerness Dockyard Church on the Isle of Sheppey was designed in the 1820s by George Ledwell Taylor in the Greek Revival style. It has been upgraded by Hugh Broughton Architects and conservation specialists Martin Ashley Architects, with a new roof that matches the original profile, and reconstructed clocktower. Inside, there’s now an exhibition area, café and events space on the ground floor. On a new mezzanine level, there’s an open-plan hub for local young people. The original fluted cast-iron columns have been conserved and redecorated. Rather than a full restoration, the architects opted to stabilise what remained, retaining some elements as vestiges of the building’s history.

An 1864 Methodist church building has been transformed into an arts centre in the Hamptons (Credit: Scott Frances)

The Church arts centre, US

This 1864 Methodist church building in the Hamptons’ Sag Harbor, NY, was built in the Italianate style. It was deconsecrated and sold in 2007. After a number of false starts under three previous owners, it was bought in 2017 by the current owners Eric Fischl and April Gornik. They briefed Skolnick Architecture+Design Partnership to preserve it in its stripped-down state. They added a mezzanine and modern elements like the glass elevator. And Fischl’s portraits of local artists have been transferred to translucent film and mounted on some of the windows, where traditionally stained-glass saints would have been.

Bokšto 6 event space in Vilnius, Lithuania was converted from a chapel, and features a new spiral staircase (Credit: Roland Halbe)

Bokšto 6 event space, Lithuania

The old town of Vilnius is a Unesco World Heritage site. Down one side street, a collection of buildings dating back 500 years has been brought back to life by London-based Studio Seilern Architects. Where once there was a Polish cardinal’s palace, a monastery, a chapel and – in Soviet times – a hospital, there are new offices, three dwellings, a restaurant, spa, swimming pool and event space. The latter was created by restoring the double-height chapel, which now has a metal spiral staircase leading to the reinstated choir stall with a glass balcony. New additions in the courtyard include an external lift and a roof for the lower ground restaurant, both clad in reflective, polished stainless steel.

A 1964 church in Quebec is now the Monique-Corriveau library (Credit: Stéphane Groleau)

Monique-Corriveau library, Canada

Quebec’s 1964 Saint-Denys-du-Plateau church by Jean-Marie Roy is likened by the library’s architects to a huge tent inflated by the wind and anchored to the ground with tensioners. The late Dan Hanganu and Côté Leahy Cardas put the library’s public functions in the nave. Their addition – executed in clear, silk-screened and coloured glass panels – contains the administration and community hall. It is separated from the library by a void, intended to mark the transition from old to new. And by keeping the functions separate, the community hall can remain open outside library opening hours, while the volume of the nave is preserved.

Vertige Escalade climbing centre in Quebec was originally a 1940s church (Credit: Charles Dion)

Vertige Escalade climbing centre, Canada

The Eglise Christ-Roi was built in the city of Sherbrooke, Quebec, in the 1940s, designed by Alphonse Bélanger. In 1965, the lower part of the church was covered with marble slabs. The last Mass was celebrated in 2006, and the church closed its doors and was sold. Vertige Escalade Inc now run it as a climbing gym. In the design by architecture firm Carlo Rondina, climbing walls are positioned around the perimeter and in a vast central block. Religious elements have been removed, with the Stations of the Cross replaced with images of sports, and the lower arched stained-glass windows replaced with clear glass. The altarpiece couldn’t be removed, so it’s hidden behind a climbing station.

A 100-year-old church was transformed into Las Iglesia skatepark in Llanera, Spain (Credit: Getty Images)

Las Iglesia skatepark, Spain

When a skateboarder attempts an aerial trick in the northern Spanish town of Llanera, they are confronted by the sorts of murals rarely seen in a church of neo-Romanesque plan with neo-Gothic details. But this century-old building is now known as Las Iglesia Skate, and the artwork is courtesy of Okuda San Miguel (aka Okudart). Called Kaos Temple, the mural features the artist’s signature many-hued geometric faces and animals above the newly-installed curved timber ramps.

St Henry’s Ecumenical Art Chapel in Turku, Finland, is both church and art space (Credit: Aira Kuvaja)

St Henry‘s Ecumenical Art Chapel, Finland

Unlike the church buildings above, this chapel – re-configured by Matti Sanaksenaho – manages to combine worship with non-religious activities. Ship-like in form, it stands in a quiet corner of a cancer hospice complex in the countryside outside Finland’s oldest city, Turku. The rounded, copper-clad chapel has an interior of Finnish pine. Around half the space is occupied by simple pews, while the area nearer the entrance has been purposely designed for art exhibitions and other events.

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August 27, 2023
From Top Boy to Sex Education: 11 of the best TV shows to watch in September

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(Image credit: Apple TV+)

From Top Boy and Sex Education to The Other Black Girl and The Morning Show, Caryn James picks the most exciting shows to watch this month.

1. Top Boy

The trailer for the final season of the acclaimed drama about drug dealers, loyalties, betrayals and murder promises “No Loose Ends”, just what you’d expect from this uncompromising series that ended last season by killing off a major character. The Guardian praised last season as “a wild and terrible concrete western”. The main antagonists competing to rule the drug world return, with Ashley Walters as Dushane and Kane Robinson as Sully. They are joined this time by Barry Keoghan, fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in The Banshees of Inisherin, and Brian Gleeson (Bad Sisters), whose characters are yet to be revealed. In addition to the question of who comes out on top, like any final season of any crime show this one may ruthlessly eliminate anyone at any time, a powerful way to go out.

Top Boy premieres on 7 September on Netflix internationally

2. The Changeling

The great LaKeith Stanfield (Atlanta, Judas and the Black Messiah) is once more at his best in this eerie drama based on the 2017 bestselling novel by Victor LaValle, known for mixing realism and the supernatural, in eloquent prose. The same mix of real and otherworldly applies to the series, with Stanfield as a bookseller devoted to his wife, Emma (Clark Backo) and their infant son. If only Emma hadn’t encountered that strange woman in Brazil who apparently put a spell on her and her future child. LaValle does the voiceover narration here, saying, “Would you even know if you’ve moved into a fairy tale? There are portals to this world we may never know we’ve travelled through”, a clue to the metaphorical way the series touches on everyday parental fears about the worst that can happen to your child.

The Changeling premieres on 8 September on Apple TV+ internationally

3. The Morning Show

No series ever went wrong by adding Jon Hamm. He joins the third season here as a tech mogul named Paul Marks, who might just buy the UBA network, and who, like real-life people named Musk, Bezos and Branson, has his own company spacecraft. Several plot turns also give the show a new jolt of energy. As the season opens, we’ll see if Alex (Jennifer Aniston) or Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) will hitch a ride into space. Cory (Billy Crudup) is wilier than ever, colluding with Paul. Flashbacks fill in details about Bradley, including her relationship with Laura (Julianna Margulies), another dark family secret, and one very intense reporting assignment in 2021. Where the show’s second instalment might have sagged a bit under the weight of Mitch Kessler (Steve Carell) in Italy, this season it zooms ahead.

The Morning Show premieres on 13 September on Apple TV+ internationally

4. The Other Black Girl

In the apparently genteel but actually cut-throat world of publishing, who can you trust? That question comes to haunt Nella (Sinclair Daniel), the only black employee at Wagner Books until another editorial assistant, Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), is hired. Longing for an ally, Nella doesn’t want to believe that Hazel is her frenemy, or worse, even as the evidence against her mounts. Eric McCormack plays the sinister founder of the company, and Garcelle Beauvais plays an author Nella idolises and gets to work with, under circumstances that might be too good to be true. The show was developed by Rashida Jones and Zakiya Dalila Harris, based on the latter’s 2021 bestselling novel. As in the book, the series smartly delves into questions of race and female friendship, while the suspense ramps up, and secrets are uncovered.

The Other Black Girl premieres on 13 September on Hulu

5. American Horror Story: Delicate

American Horror Story is a shape-shifting anthology with a different creepy plot and new cast each season, so why not bring on a star whose persona keeps morphing too? In her first real acting stint, Kim Kardashian steps outside her familiar fixtures as reality-show and social media star, and joins a cast that includes Emma Roberts and Cara Delevingne. Is Kardashian’s presence stunt casting, real acting or both? We’ll see. The trailer promises stylish and stylised medical horror and a pregnancy plot at least partly based on Danielle Valentine’s recently-published novel, Delicate Condition, which the author has said was inspired by Alien, and which has been compared to Rosemary’s Baby. The season will be split in two parts, so expect to be left hanging after these five episodes.

American Horror Story: Delicate premieres on 20 September on FX

6. Sex Education

Learning about sex is a lifelong endeavour for some, but this hit series is calling it quits after the fourth season, which makes sense now that the characters are aging out of their teen years. Maintaining a tone that is both comic and real, this instalment sees Otis (Asa Butterfield) and his friends head to a new, progressive school, Cavendish College. Ncuti Gatwa, soon to be the new Doctor Who, returns as Otis’s best friend, Eric. So does Emma Mackey (Emily) as Otis’s now-girlfriend, Maeve, who is studying in the US with a writing instructor played by Dan Levy (Schitt’s Creek). Series creator Laurie Nunn explained her decision to end the show now, saying that while writing the fourth season, “it just started to feel very clear that the stories were coming to an end”.

Sex Education premieres on 21 September on Netflix internationally

(Credit: Katalin Vermes/Starz Entertainment)

7. The Continental: From the World of John Wick

A prequel to the blockbuster John Wick movies, this three-part series is set in New York in the 1970s, and tells the story of how the droll, urbane Winston (Ian McShane in the films) came to run The Continental, the hotel that is meant to be a safe space for assassins, including his great pal Wick (Keanu Reeves). Colin Woodell plays the young Winston, and Mel Gibson appears as Cormac, a crime boss who threatens him: if Winston doesn’t find his brother, who stole from Cormac, there will be consequences. Who knows if fans will embrace a series without Reeves and McShane, but it’s easy to see that the show is true to its subtitle, with swords, guns and car chases, a dark look and Winston saying, “This is more than vengeance. This is justice”.

The Continental premieres on 22 September on Peacock

8. Still Up

Fans of Nora Ephron movies will find echoes of not one but two in this comedy about platonic friends unable to see that they are perfect for each other, and who are both insomniacs, as if Harry and Sally could never get to sleep. They spend hours late at night talking to each other on the phone, à la Sleepless in Seattle. But this small-scale, London-set comedy has a different tone from romcoms, leaning into quirky humour. Socially anxious Danny (Craig Roberts) hates to leave his flat. Lisa (Antonia Thomas) is slightly scatter-brained, concocting an elaborate scheme to return a dress she borrowed years before and never returned. Even as the series teases the “will they or won’t they” romance, the back-and-forth of their late-night calls and their chaotic approach to almost any ordinary event, like ordering pizza, are what give the show its wacky tone.

Still Up premieres on 22 September on Apple TV+ internationally

9. Krapopolis

This animated comedy from Dan Harmon (co-creator of Rick and Morty, creator of Community) is set in ancient Greece among a gods-and-monsters family that has a dash of human somehow mixed in. The voices will sound familiar. Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd) is Tyrannis, the king of Krapopolis, who has a bold new idea: civilization. Good luck convincing his parents. Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso) is his mother, the imperious and perfectly named goddess Deliria. Matt Berry (What We Do in the Shadows) is his dad, the also perfectly named Shlub, a mix of human, horse, lion and scorpion. In a rare move, Fox has already renewed the series for two more seasons.

Krapopolis premieres on 24 September on Fox in the US

(Credit: Brooke Palmer / Amazon Prime Video)

10. Gen V

There’s Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters in the X-Men franchise, there’s Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, and now there’s Godolkin University School of Crimefighting in this spin-off of the hit Prime Video superhero satire The Boys. The school is run by the nefarious Vought International, the company that monetises superheroes in The Boys, but Gen V is more concerned with university-level angst, like sex and exams. The students are played by a cast of largely unknown actors, who introduced themselves last year in an Instagram video that promises the series will have blood, guts, hormones, drama and mystery. This addition to The Boys franchise, which includes the animated series The Boys Presents: Diabolical, comes at a good time. Eric Kripke, the show’s so-creator has posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the season four premiere of The Boys will not happen until after the ongoing Writers Guild strike is resolved.

Gen V premieres on 29 September on Prime Video

11. The Long Shadow

This seven-part drama is based on the real-life reign of terror created by Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who was convicted of murdering 13 women in the UK between 1975 and 1980. Instead of focusing on the killer, though, the series centres on the investigators in the biggest manhunt in British history, as well as the victims and their families. The top-flight cast includes Toby Jones and David Morrissey as the lead detectives. Katherine Kelly plays a murder victim and Daniel Mays is her husband. Lewis Arnold, who has directed episodes of the crime series Sherwood and Des, directs all seven instalments here. The show’s writer, George Kay, a co-creator of the recent Idris Elba series, Hijack, has said, “This is not a story of a Ripper who hailed from Yorkshire, but the story of how Yorkshire was ripped apart”.

The Long Shadow premieres in September on ITV and ITVX in the UK, and next year on Sundance Now in the US

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August 24, 2023
And Just Like That Series 2 finale: How the Sex and the City sequel became the ultimate ‘cringe-watch’

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This week’s season two finale ended on something of a high, despite at some points feeling like a laboured group-therapy session centred around Carrie’s “last supper” in her flat before potentially moving in with Aidan. In the end that didn’t happen, because they agreed to put their relationship on hold for five years so Aidan could devote himself to raising his teenage sons: instead we saw Carrie and Seema on holiday in Greece, both in relationships “on pause”, reflecting that they “ran at love”, but life got in the way.

Another positive element of this latest series for Dawson was the way it harked back to the original series’ sexual boldness: “It was great to see sex back in the city. Everyone is bonking and dating and that was always the source of SATC’s magic.” Dawson believes that some of the plotlines are beginning to make more sense, two seasons in, and that the writing is beginning to bed down a little more: “I also like to think it was always the plan to have Miranda lose her goddamn mind and then recover herself in season two”. Indeed perhaps the characters’ erraticity is more authentic than it has been given credit for, reflective of how we all might become a little more unpredictable as we grow older.

Journalist Evan Ross Katz said on his podcast Drop Your Buffs recently that he had found a way to consume And Just Like That, which is fitting for its unique appeal – watching every episode twice: “I make peace with the choices that were made and I’m able to say, ‘OK, if this is the dish being served, and I’m eating it, what are the some other flavours that I can find within this…’ . The more I watch it, the more I enjoy it.”

Ultimately perhaps the reason why viewers will always return to And Just Like That despite their misgivings is akin to how Miranda described her mid-life crisis in this week’s finale:

“[It’s] like a good train wreck, in which nobody dies and you get off the train in a new place, a place where you needed to go to but only a place that a train could get you to.” All aboard for season three, then.

And Just Like That is available to watch on Max in the US and NOW in the UK

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August 24, 2023
From Dumb Money to Saw X: 10 of the best films to watch in September

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(Image credit: Focus Features)

From Dumb Money and Saw X to My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, Nicholas Barber picks the standout films to catch this month.

1. The Equaliser 3

Denzel Washington’s son, John David Washington, can be seen this month in The Creator, but Washington Sr hasn’t given up on action movies himself. In The Equaliser 3, the 68-year-old returns as Robert McCall, the retired government agent who was played by Edward Woodward in the 1980s TV series, and by Queen Latifah in the recent CBS reboot. Washington’s ultra-violent version of the character is now living quietly on Italy’s idyllic Amalfi Coast, but his sojourn ends when the Mafia target some of his new friends. Dakota Fanning co-stars as a CIA agent, having appeared in another of Washington’s action movies, Man on Fire, in 2004. “It was so beautiful to watch them together on the set, just talking, laughing,” the film’s director Antoine Fuqua, told James White in Empire. “She’s like a daughter to him, he loves her. It was very easy with those two.”

On general release from 1 September

(Credit: Amazon Prime Video)

2. Cassandro

A wildly acclaimed biopic from an Oscar-winning documentary maker, Roger Ross Williams, Cassandro stars Gael García Bernal as Saúl Armendáriz, a gay Mexican wrestler who is paid to lose all of his matches in humiliating style. But at the end of the 1980s, his trainer (Roberta Colindrez) encourages him to develop an empowered new persona, Cassandro, a character who is feminine, flamboyant, and willing to defeat his opponents. He changes both his own life and lucha libre (Mexican wrestling) in the process. Carlos Aguilar of IndieWire says García Bernal is “irresistible” in a “fabulous” film: “Glowing with García Bernal’s magnetism, Cassandro balances the triumphant exaltation of Armendáriz’s singular evolution as a trailblazer with the obvious, still not entirely eliminated bigotry that made his trajectory so significant and groundbreaking in the first place.”

Released on 15 Sept in the US and the UK, and on 22 September on Prime Video

3. Saw X

The Saw franchise began severing limbs and gouging flesh almost two decades ago in 2004. Its main villain, the serial-killing John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Tobin Bell), was killed off in 2006 in Saw III, but that didn’t stop him popping up in flashbacks throughout the series – and now at last he is getting his main character moment. Saw X is a prequel-sequel, set between the events of Saw and Saw II. Kramer travels to a clinic in Mexico in search of a cure for his terminal cancer, but when he discovers that he is being scammed, he sets some typically elaborate traps to punish (or “reawaken”, as he’d put it) everyone involved. “The Saw movies have tried to move beyond Bell’s John Kramer twice now,” writes Padraig Cotter in ScreenRant, “but the character is simply too important to the series’ success. Like Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger, Bell is a key ingredient and either recasting or rebooting Saw probably wouldn’t work either.”

On general release from 28 September

(Credit: Sam Lothridge/20th Century Studios)

4. No One Will Save You

A home invasion chiller with a twist, the cheerily titled No One Will Save You stars Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart) as a reclusive young woman who has to fend off an alien creature that sneaks into her house. Not much else has been revealed about the film, which is written and directed by Brian Duffield, but we do know that Dever won’t have taken long to learn her lines. “The film’s screenplay is almost entirely dialogue-free,” says Brendon Connolly in Film Stories. “Does Duffield go top to bottom without a single utterance? We’re not saying. [But] it’s going to be very action-driven, and it’s going to be a film that leans heavily on visual storytelling – on atmosphere, on shot design, on cutting, and on performance.”

Released on 22 Sept on Disney

(Credit: Glen Milner/20th Century Studios)

5. The Creator

Gareth Edwards, the director of Godzilla and Rogue One, returns with another science-fiction action epic. The Creator is set in a dystopian future in which humanity is engaged in a Terminator-like war against AI-controlled robots. Its hero, John David Washington, is a soldier on a mission to track down the enemy’s ultimate weapon, only to discover that the weapon is actually a robotic young girl. The dangers of artificial intelligence are a hot topic, both in real life and in the movies (such as Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One), but Edwards was inspired more by the film’s central dilemma. “It’s a really, really twisted father-child story,” he told Eric Eisenberg at Cinemablend, “in that basically this little kid to John David’s character is Hitler, and you can stop World War Two if you just kill this kid. So his whole thing is he’s taking this kid on this journey ultimately to be executed, and it starts to make him question everything.”

On general release from 27 September

6. Dumb Money

In January 2021, numerous small-time investors bought shares in GameStop, an ailing video game shop, and made a fortune from the hedge fund managers who bet on the stock’s value plummeting. The investors’ unlikely guru was Keith Gill, a young financial analyst who offered his advice via amateurish YouTube videos and Reddit posts. His David-v-Goliath story was recounted in Ben Mezrich’s book, The Antisocial Network, and that in turn has been made into a comedy drama by Craig Gillespie, the director of Cruella and I, Tonya. Paul Dano stars as Gill, alongside Shailene Woodley as his wife, and Seth Rogen and Nick Offerman as two of the Wall Street tycoons he outsmarted. “I think it’s definitely about fairness,” Gillespie told Anthony Breznican in Vanity Fair. “There is this real divide that’s happening in the country in terms of wealth, and it always feels like everything is rigged for the rich in a way. So this is one of those nice moments where it went the other way.”

On general release from 20 September

7. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a big fat phenomenon. Starting life as an autobiographical one-woman play, written by and starring Nia Vardalos, it went on to be one of the most profitable romantic comedies ever, with a budget of $5 million and a worldwide gross of $368.7 million. A spin-off sitcom and a belated sequel weren’t as successful, but maybe the threequel can recapture some of the initial magic. Once again, a Greek-American travel agent, Toula Portokalos (Vardalos), and her non-Greek husband (John Corbett), are dealing with her close-knit family, but this time they are in sunny Greece. After the death of Toula’s father (Michael Constantine, who died in 2021), the family visits the town where he grew up. “[Michael] had told me he wouldn’t be able to join us for the third film and his wish was that we go on,” Vardalos said on Instagram. “I wrote the screenplay to reflect Michael’s decision and will always treasure his last messages to me.”

On general release from 6 September

8. Mr Jimmy

There are Led Zeppelin fans and there are Led Zeppelin fans – and then there is Akio Sakurai, the subject of Peter Michael Dowd’s fascinating documentary, Mr Jimmy. A Japanese ex-kimono salesman, Sakurai has devoted his life to impersonating Led Zeppelin’s guitar god, Jimmy Page. But “impersonating” is putting it mildly. Sakurai doesn’t just want to approximate Page’s playing; he prides himself on being able to recreate exactly how Page sounded, looked and moved during every single recorded concert. His obsessiveness won the approval of Page himself, who caught one of his shows in a Tokyo bar in 2012, but when Sakurai moved to Los Angeles and tried to impose his stratospheric standards on a Led Zeppelin tribute band, his colleagues weren’t quite so impressed. “An incredible take on identity, artistry, projection, passion,” writes David Fear in Rolling Stone, “and trying to inspire others to follow an impossible dream of second-hand perfection.”

Released in the US on 1 September

(Credit: 20th Century Studios)

9. A Haunting in Venice

The problem with Kenneth Branagh’s first two Hercule Poirot mysteries, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, is that classic films had been made out of the same Agatha Christie novels already. A Haunting in Venice is a different matter. It’s adapted from a lesser-known Christie book called Hallowe’en Party, so its plot will be unfamiliar to most viewers, and Branagh has given it an unfamiliar tone, too. As usual, he has gathered a star-studded cast to play the suspects, including Michelle Yeoh, Tina Fey and Jamie Dornan (who played his younger self’s dad in his autobiographical Oscar nominee, Belfast), but he has added the spectral spookiness of a horror movie. “If we are going to continue to make these films, we can’t do the same thing over and over,” the film’s producer, James Prichard, told Neil Smith in Total Film. “A departure at this moment is possibly risky, but it also has the potential to keep it alive, bring in a different audience, and do something interesting that will hopefully surprise and delight.”

On general release from 13 September

10. The Inventor

Could The Inventor be this year’s answer to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio? It’s a colourful musical comedy that uses stop-motion animation (with some hand-drawn 2D animation thrown in) to visualise Leonardo da Vinci’s last years. Having upset the Pope (voiced by Matt Berry) in Italy, Leonardo (Stephen Fry) joins the French court where he is befriended by Princess Marguerite (Daisy Ridley), and is free to experiment with flying machines, mechanical lions and other contraptions. Co-directed by Pierre-Luc Granjon, this is the first feature film to be directed by Jim Capobianco, a Pixar veteran who co-wrote the Oscar-nominated Ratatouille screenplay. “I realised it’s about what you leave behind for others and how you affect other people with what you do,” Capobianco told Karen Idelson in Variety, “how you change other people’s lives while you’re here.”

Released on 15 September in the US

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August 22, 2023
New episodes of the BBC’s Doctor Who are streaming globally from November
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The 14th season of Doctor Who begins streaming in November as part of the show’s 60th anniversary, and will be available on Disney+ globally for fans outside of the UK.

When is it?

Three hour-long special episodes of Doctor Who will be available from November 2023, with a Christmas special dropping in December and a new season in Spring 2024.

Where can I stream Doctor Who in the US?

Viewers outside of the UK can watch new episodes via Disney+; older episodes are available on Amazon Prime.

Who is in the cast for the specials?

David Tennant, who left the show in 2010, returns as The Doctor, alongside Catherine Tate, who reprises her role as Donna Noble. Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, MD) and newcomer Yasmin Finney (Heartstopper) also star.

What are the new episode titles?

In May 2023, the BBC announced that the episodes would be:

The Star Beast

Wild Blue Yonder

The Giggle

“The titles are just the beginning of the Doctor’s biggest adventure yet” says showrunner Russell T Davies. “Autumn is coming, with three hours of danger, Donna and disaster about to be unleashed!”
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August 22, 2023
The fight to save Ukraine’s cultural spaces and heritage

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Now in a safer place, though far from her home, she is rebuilding her life. But since the war, her art feels more “gloomy”, not helped by the disappearance of a friend, the artist Viacheslav Mashnytski. He established the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art in his own home, and has been missing since October. “We don’t know if it was murder or kidnapping, or a violent attack – it’s still under police investigation,” she says. “We are waiting every day for news, but the hope is very little.”

Another great artistic loss is the life’s work of late artist Polina Rayko. She began painting at 69, to process her grief after the death of her husband, and losing her only daughter in a car crash. She painted every inch of her house, in Oleshky, in southern Ukraine, in a fantastical, folk art style. It was considered a national treasure, drawing many visitors. But then in June came the destruction of the huge Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power station, in a Russian-controlled area of Kherson. The resulting flood is believed to have engulfed Rayko’s house-museum, as well as villages and towns downstream of it. The power station itself, built in 1954, was the only structure of its kind in the Soviet monumental classicism style, which has deep European roots.

Olia Hercules, a chef from Kherson, posted on Instagram about Rayko: “Her story and art gave strength and inspired me immensely… Only photographs and documentaries on YouTube remain. I cannot stop crying.” She added: “Please remember her and her beautiful house full of unique art, now under murky water of the catastrophic flood.”

The flood also submerged Scythian and Cossack burial mounds, old Cossack settlements and Tyagyn Fortress, a monument of Lithuanian and Crimean Tartar architecture from the 14th and 15th Centuries. But as the waters receded there was a small win, as an ancient settlement, named the Cossack Meadow, was revealed.

Survive and rebuild

The fight is on to preserve Ukraine’s precious culture, and support is pouring in from all quarters. Save the Spot is a not-for-profit fund-raiser based in London. It has partnered with 15 cultural venues in Ukraine, so far, such as Borodyanka music school for children, XII Months Zoo and Pokrovsk Historic Museum, in the Donetsk region. Donors can buy “entrance tickets” to their chosen venue, to support them to survive and ultimately rebuild. Its founder is Tatiana Fokina, CEO of a fine wine emporium and a Michelin starred restaurant in London, where she and her partner, Yevgeny Chichvarkin, have lived since 2009. Both are Russian by birth, have been “very vocal” on the war and critics of Putin – so much so, she says Chichvarkin is “a political refugee”.

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August 21, 2023
Ridley Scott’s Napoleon: Was the French leader really a monster?

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The Napoleonic propaganda machine was a very, very powerful tool in the course of the Empire and churned out a version of his wars in which much of the fault was down to perfidious Albion,” he adds. “It wasn’t France at all – it was everybody making war against France. This powerful Napoleonic legend continues to operate to this day. Napoleon is a living presence. He continues to operate from beyond the grave. He continues to mould the way in which we see him.”

But Esdaile also rejects the Hitler and Stalin comparisons.

“Napoleon had many faults and was a loathsome individual but the racial ideology that underpinned the Nazi regime simply wasn’t there,” he says. “Napoleon is not guilty of genocide. Napoleon doesn’t engage in wholesale purges. In fairness to Napoleon, the number of political prisoners in the course of his reign is relatively limited. To compare him with Hitler and Stalin is a historical nonsense.”

Of course, Ridley Scott, a titan of the film industry, director of Blade Runner, Gladiator, Thelma and Louise, Alien and many others, has been in the business long enough to know how to promote a movie. (Napoleon is a return to the milieu of his first feature, The Duellists, released more than four decades ago.) It’s entirely possible he knew the Hitler and Stalin remarks would generate publicity and that is why he made them.

So will Esdaile be going to see Napoleon when it is released?

“I suppose I’m going to have to but I know it can’t be any good because Rod Steiger is not playing Napoleon,” he jokes. “There is so much wrong with the 1970 film Waterloo but Steiger’s performance as Napoleon is just outstanding.”

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August 20, 2023
Rich Men North of Richmond: The hit song that has divided the US

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The recently-released film Sound of Freedom has also become an unlikely US hit, with some critics taking its anti-child-trafficking story at its word, while others suggested it echoed the unfounded QAnon conspiracy theory about liberals condoning sex crimes against children. Alejandro Monteverde, the director of Sound of Freedom, has given interviews saying how heartbroken he is at the false QAnon label.

Boosting sales

Oliver Anthony’s Rich Men North of Richmond represents the image of the rural, put-upon white working-class hero, and the song reflects the narrative of grievance espoused by some right-wing politicians. His lyrics describe: “the obese milkin’ welfare” as well as saying: “I wish politicians would look out for miners/ And not just minors on an island somewhere”, which some have suggested is a reference to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In another part of his introductory video, Anthony says the issue of child abuse made him decide to speak out, “when I started to see that becoming normalised.” Similarly, when the Aldean video caused a backlash, his wife, Brittany Aldean, defended him on Instagram, and asked, “How about instead of creating stories why not focus on the real ones, such as child trafficking?” The idea that child abuse has been ignored or “normalised” again echoes the common but unevidenced conspiratorial QAnon narrative, as some critics have pointed out.

The Try That in a Small Town video was pulled from Country Music Television, and the six seconds of Black Lives Matter images have since been removed, which Aldean’s record label said was due to copyright issues. But the controversy helped boost sales. After the backlash to the video, which dropped two months after the song itself, demand jumped by 999%, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

And this latest controversy could change everything for Anthony, whose earlier, little-known songs are about drinking and working. In the personal video he says he has found sobriety and religion. If and when he addresses politics, we may know more. At the moment, his song could become just one more weapon in the culture wars.

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August 18, 2023
The inside story of how Bruce Lee’s martial-arts epic Enter the Dragon changed cinema forever

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The film has more than stood the test of time, and in 2004 was inducted into the US Library of Congress’s National Film Library of “culturally significant” films. But during production, Enter the Dragon appeared snake bitten. The first-ever co-production between a Chinese film company (Golden Harvest/Concord) and a Hollywood studio (Warner Brothers), it was plagued by language barriers, script issues, and at least one physical confrontation involving its star. And the budget was significantly less than the commonly reported $850,000, claims associate producer Andre Morgan. “The whole budget was $450,000,” he tells BBC Culture. “Remember, you heard it from somebody that was there. I prepared the budget; I signed the budget.” Regardless, the profits were astronomical, with Enter the Dragon reportedly grossing $100,000,0000 worldwide upon its initial release.

A star like few others

Morgan worked on the Chinese side. He was just 20 years old when principal photography commenced and celebrated his 21st birthday on the iconic hall of mirrors set that was built specifically for the climactic duel between Lee’s character and the villainous Han. He tells BBC Culture that in person Lee had a star presence unlike almost anyone else. “Bruce Lee never walked into a room in his life; he entered a room. When Bruce was in a room, nobody else mattered. Steve McQueen was the same,” he says. Indeed, McQueen was a close friend and student of Lee, who before hitting the big time himself, taught martial arts to a host of celebrities.

By the early 70s, McQueen, aka “The King of Cool”, had conquered Hollywood with iconic appearances in The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, Bullitt and The Thomas Crown Affair. Lee, who was born in San Francisco in 1940 but spent his formative years in Hong Kong, would also conquer Hollywood. After returning to the US in 1959, he made Seattle home, and attended the University of Washington to study philosophy. Soon thereafter, Lee started a family, and eventually decamped to California to pursue his film career in earnest.

But he had one major strike against him: he was Chinese. Regardless of his eye-popping martial arts skills and background as a child actor in the Hong Kong film industry, Hollywood’s biggest powerbrokers were unwilling to risk a significant investment on a 5ft-7in, 135lb Chinese leading man with a thick Cantonese accent. They were making a big mistake.

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August 17, 2023
Strays review: Three stars for foul-mouthed, R-rated dog comedy

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The live-action film uses trained dogs enhanced with special effects, with the occasional human on screen. Will Forte plays Doug, Reggie’s owner, a loser stoner who kept the dog out of spite when his girlfriend left him. Doug keeps trying to lose Reggie, dropping him off far away, but Reggie believes it’s a game they’re playing, which he wins by coming back. Ferrell is perfect for the role, bringing the same sweet, guileless enthusiasm he showed in Elf, and he’s so shrewd an actor that he’s actually touching when Reggie says, “I really just want to be home.”

When Doug finally drops Reggie in a mean alley, he meets the scrappy Bug, who insists that being a stray is the only way to live. You’re free of pesky humans, and can have sex with anything you want, including a random couch left on the street. Foxx sounds a lot as though he’s channelling Samuel L Jackson here, which isn’t a bad thing. Between the crude language and the streetwise delivery, it’s almost as if Quentin Tarantino had made a dog movie. In fact, the director is Josh Greenbaum, who did Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and who keeps the action moving swiftly.

When Bug finally convinces Reggie that Doug does not love him, Reggie decides to make his way back and bite off the one thing Doug loves the most, his penis. It’s funnier when Ferrell says it. And technically, that means Strays qualifies as a revenge movie.

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August 17, 2023
New DC superhero film Blue Beetle is ‘stale and derivative’

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Over the past year, Warner Bros’ DC superhero films seem to have suffered a severe case of Kryptonite poisoning. Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods and The Flash all crashed and burned at the box office, and it’s not likely that their new offering, Blue Beetle, is going to save the day. It was always a long shot, mind you. Compared to Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, Blue Beetle is a lesser known, fuzzily defined character: his main claim to fame is that he inspired Nite Owl in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ classic graphic novel, Watchmen. But if the Blue Beetle film had had enough fresh ideas, its protagonist’s obscurity might not have been an issue. Unfortunately, the average beetle has more fresh ideas than this one.

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The story begins as Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) returns to his hometown, the futuristic, fictional, and horribly fake-looking Palmera City, having studied for a pre-law degree in Gotham. He doesn’t say whether he met Bruce Wayne while he was at university, but things didn’t go well for his family in the meantime. His dad (Damián Alcázar) is recovering from a heart attack, and the family is about to be kicked out of its cosy barrio house by developers from the evil Kord corporation. Nonetheless, Jaime apparently has no qualms about getting a job as a cleaner for the corporation’s villainous CEO, Victoria (Susan Sarandon), or about flirting with Victoria’s non-villainous niece, Jenny (Bruna Marquezine). For reasons that aren’t clear, Victoria is obsessed with creating cyborg Robocops with the help of a small extra-terrestrial device called The Scarab. But, much to her annoyance, this shiny metal bug chooses Jaime as its host. After it attaches itself to his spine, he is wrapped in an ugly exoskeleton that allows him to fly, blast people with energy beams, and do various other generic super things.

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August 16, 2023
Eight of the world’s most stunning floating homes

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De Walvisch, UK

The interior of De Walvisch, a Dutch sailing clipper, now moored in Wapping, East London, is potently atmospheric. It boasts mahogany-toned wood walls and a plethora of striking objects with an old maritime provenance, all sourced by its occupants – artists Zatorski & Zatorski (a couple known as Thomas and Angel to their friends).

In 2000, the duo bought a narrowboat, which saw them develop a taste for living “slightly under the radar”. Their decision to buy De Walvisch was reinforced by their interest in Wapping. “History is around every corner in this part of town,” they say.

The couple restored the boat, kitting it out with reclaimed pieces, including a washbasin from a submarine. A porthole with a brass frame – rescued from SS Transylvania, the British passenger liner torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in 1917 – now graces the bow-windowed bedroom (formerly the captain’s cabin).

The boat is berthed at Hermitage Moorings, a co-operative the artists helped to set up, which is shared with 17 other boats. This environment inspires the artists, who are interested in the potential of ships to symbolise discovery, new life and adventure. They document their life aboard the boat, and use it to stage artworks and performances, and to host salons, where people from different disciplines are invited to discuss their ideas.

Making Waves: Floating Homes and Life on the Water by Portland Mitchell is published by Thames & Hudson.

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August 15, 2023
How Suits became TV’s most popular show

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“It usually takes me a few episodes to get into a show, but Suits had one of the best pilots I’ve ever seen. It had me gripped from the start,” says Johnson, 38, from London, who originally watched the show on TV but is now rewatching it on Netflix. She was drawn to Suits because of its sharp dialogue and the mixture of comedy, romance and dramatic plot twists. She also liked its array of female characters, including Jessica Pearson – the firm’s no-nonsense managing partner, played by Gina Torres. “For the time, it was quite a diverse cast,” she says. “And there was a black woman in charge.”

Anti-prestige TV

Suits being added to Netflix, the world’s most popular streaming service, is surely the key driver of its current success. TV critic and broadcaster Scott Bryan, host of the Must Watch podcast on BBC Sounds, thinks it sits in a sweet spot where it’s attracting re-watchers and first-time viewers. “We’re seeing a boom of new programmes in the streaming age, but also there is massive viewership of older shows, many of which might be available to stream for the first time,” he tells BBC Culture. “This can feed into a nostalgic viewing tradition, where fans rewatch a show they’ve seen before, or it can be a chance to watch a show that you might have missed the first time.”

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August 15, 2023