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

Before we get lost in such layered timelines, here’s a brief history. Burlesque’s origins are in Victorian Britain: it grew out of music hall and vaudeville. When Lydia Thompson’s troupe The British Blondes visited New York in 1868, their combination of parody, humour, singing, dancing and revealing costumes caused a …

KPop Demon Hunters follows the story of Huntr/x, an all-female K-pop group (Rumi, Mira and Zoey) who double as secret guardians of the world. Beyond the glamour of the stage, these global superstars protect their fans from supernatural threats, squaring off against their villainous counterparts Saja Boys. This animated film …

So she kept everyone waiting and wondering. She seems to have had an instinctive grasp of what we now call PR, and liked to present herself as wholly devoted to her realm. From early in her reign she cultivated the image of the Virgin Queen. In 1559 she declared, in response to …

In 1986, Jane Goodall told the BBC how similar chimps and humans really are BBC News

Of course, London has been portrayed in different ways throughout cinema history, including its bombed-out ruins after World War Two, in films such as 1949’s Passport to Pimlico. The city’s edgier side has been evident in cult classics such as Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971), featuring a brutalist housing …

Japanese animation, or anime, has a legacy that stretches back to the early 20th Century, and a creative scope that spans seemingly endless stories and styles, from pirate sagas to sci-fi warfare; sorcery to sports action; martial arts mythology to star-crossed romance. The music used to soundtrack it is similarly …

It was during the 19th Century that clubs in London boomed – approximately a dozen existed at the start of the century, and 400 by the end. Clubs in general became less louche, in step with a new, Victorian interest in propriety. Most significantly, they took on a central role …

Gunn’s most striking idea is to start his story not at the beginning, but somewhere around the middle, as if this were the third or fourth film in the series. When we first meet Superman, played by the suitably handsome and wholesome David Corenswet, he’s already been protecting Metropolis from …

This ultra-violent, sexually graphic film was condemned – but became influential BBC News

The exact date the monument went up is contested, but its official centenary was celebrated on 13 July 2023, making it 102 years old this week. It has now become synonymous with the film industry, but it wasn’t originally intended to be. In fact, it wasn’t even meant to last …

All the same, few comic characters were as militant as Superman. In one early issue, he demolishes a row of slum homes in order to force the authorities to build better housing (a risky strategy, that one). In another, he takes on the city’s gambling industry because it is bankrupting …

By that measure, All Fours has been an unequivocal success. On July’s Substack page, a community of women have gathered to share not just their love for the book, but how it has changed their lives. They talk of feeling seen, understood and liberated after reading it; that it’s made …

The harsh conditions were totally alien to most people there. “The crew complained a lot about the heat, humidity, hotel rooms, bugs, mosquitoes,” he says. “The mud – sometimes knee-deep – was a real challenge.” Damien Leake, who played a machine gunner in the film, was on set for three …

Getty Images The Championships have begun, and the quintessentially British tennis tournament has some very particular codes for attendees to follow. How are spectators expected to behave, and what should they – or should they definitely not – wear? Afternoon tea, a stiff upper lip and Wimbledon – all so …

Universal Studios Starring Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey, the latest in the dinosaur blockbuster series follows the template created by the original Jurassic Park – but it’s no match for it. Eww. There is a definite whiff of staleness about the latest Jurassic film, which strains to come up with …

In July 1987, 38 years ago this week, a Nazi war criminal, the “Butcher of Lyon”, was sentenced to life in prison by a French court for crimes against humanity. Four years earlier, in 1983, the BBC reported on how France felt about this reckoning with its dark past. Klaus …