A series of fires broke out around the city. In an effort to see in the dark, many New Yorkers had lit candles indoors, and curtains and furniture accidentally caught fire. “I just remember it turning into this nightmare situation where it was non-stop,” Sharon Hawa, who worked for the …

What is certain is that The Black Cauldron aimed to be a different kind of Disney film. “Ron Miller, the former CEO of the company and the son-in-law of Walt Disney, wanted the film to be a departure,” Neil O’Brien, author of After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of …

Simplicity of design The slogan has also been appropriated by protesters, “subverting the original propaganda message by adapting it to new situations and new social challenges (‘Keep calm and resist’)”, says Parry. “This shows how existing familiarity with a phrase can provide a shorthand tactic to attract attention, and hopefully …

“Pac-Man [the character] was designed to represent the core concept of the game, ‘to eat’, in the simplest way possible,” Michiko Kumagai, the licensing manager for the iconic character at the game’s publisher, Bandai Namco, tells the BBC. “Just like the McDonald’s arches, he’s become an internationally recognised symbol. At one …

Throughout July, as FBI agents continued to scour the Mississippi swampland looking for the three missing civil rights activists, they repeatedly came across the remains of other black murder victims. One of these was the body of 14-year-old Herbert Oarsby, who was discovered wearing a Core T-shirt. Charles Eddie Moore, …

How a fashion frenzy is gripping auction houses – and sending prices sky high BBC News

While neither Trump nor anyone in his administration has, as yet, publicly condemned Sherald’s painting or its representation of a black transgender woman, the organisers of her scheduled exhibition, which was due to open on 19 September, had reason to fear imminent repercussions to its funding should the work go …

But, perhaps most remarkably of all, Ray of Light helped to usher underground dance sounds into the musical mainstream. Mostly co-produced by Madonna and Orbit, with contributions from the singer’s longtime collaborator Patrick Leonard and another forward-thinking British record producer, Marius de Vries, it minted a distinctive, sonically stunning mix …

Some describe Paltrow as a “nepo baby”. Her father, Bruce Paltrow, was an established producer (Hill Street Blues) and her mother Blythe Danner was, and is, a noted actress (in 2000’s Meet the Parents, among many other films). She was attending theatres with her mother from infancy, but she worked …

From the new run of Netflix’s Wednesday to the first ever Alien series BBC News

“As I committed to the turn, I saw some dirt going up in the air and I knew something was wrong, and, sure enough, I came around, exited the turn, and he was sideways on fire in the middle of the track,” Lunger told the BBC. “I slowed, but my …

Marketing campaigns for summer blockbusters have traditionally kicked in around six months before release. But one film not playing by these rules is Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, his much-discussed take on Homer’s epic, starring Matt Damon, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o and many more. Earlier this month, more than a …

One of Hollywood’s darkest ever anti-romantic comedies, The War of the Roses (1989) starred Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as a couple going through a blisteringly bitter divorce. Thirty-six years on, it has been remade – or reimagined – with Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch as the unhappy couple. Cumberbatch …

Particularly key is the knives-edge music that plays when blonde bombshell Marion Crane (Janet Leigh), not long after checking in to the Bates Motel, is attacked through a shower curtain by a shadowy killer, who later turns out to be the motel’s owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins), dressed up as …

When, in 1969, the duo opened a sister studio in LA (and another in Sausalito in 1972), they supercharged the original concept, creating a sort of rock hotel, with group Jacuzzis, mirror-ceilinged bedrooms, bedrooms with nicknames including “S&M”, and, in keeping with the era, a variety of illicit drugs intended …

This retro-future Marvel offering has ‘breezy competence’ but not enough tension BBC News

Ravenhill recalled that upon telling Kane that he thought Cleansed was brilliant, she smiled and replied, “Yeah, well, I’m in love”. A couple of months later, when she directed Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck at the Gate, Kane removed the possibility of redemption for any of the characters. “Yeah, well, I fell …

But several suspicious details served to fuel speculation. “There are so many things,” Arena told the BBC. “For instance, even the morning we were called about the accident, he was seen at the Shiretown Inn, where he was staying, sitting having breakfast in somewhat of a casual manner.” A newspaper, …

With a new Downton Abbey film coming this autumn, and the heroine of Lena Dunham’s new Netflix series, Too Much, fantasising about being courted by a Mr Darcy-style suitor, there’s no denying the current appetite for depictions of old-fashioned, high-society romance. The aforementioned Bridgerton, The Buccaneers and The Gilded Age, …

From buzzy titles to blockbusters – the best books to escape with BBC News