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Culture

The latest published reporting in this category.

Entertainment

‘It still preys on my mind’: readers on their scariest non-horror movies

After Guardian writers picked their choices for Halloween, readers have responded with films that send chills down their spines – from Never Let Me Go to The Truman Show The murder of the taxi driver is utterly excruciating and the hanging at the end equally so. Both are shown in full, in close up and in real time. The condemned man’s last cigarette is smoked in full. The unease (to put it mildly) of the audience was palpable. Wiscot Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Entertainment

John Leeson, voice behind Doctor Who’s K9, dies at 83

Actor, who appeared in Dad’s Army and Rainbow, remembered as ‘true gent’ by TV producer Russell T Davies John Leeson, the actor best known as the voice of K9, the robot dog in Doctor Who, has died at 83. Leeson’s son, Guy Ducker, shared the news on Facebook. He wrote: “I regret to announce the death of my father … after a summer of illness. The end was peaceful.” Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Meeting Elvis was ‘my biggest day with the Beatles’, says road manager’s book

Mal Evans’s tale of historic meeting among revelations in forthcoming memoir unpublished before his death in 1976 Meeting Elvis Presley was “the biggest day of all the years I have spent with the famous Beatles”, the band’s loyal road manager wrote. It is among recollections in a memoir that Mal Evans had planned to publish, with the band’s permission, before his death in 1976, aged 40, in a shooting by the Los Angeles police. Distraught over the breakup of his marriage, it is believed to have been “suicide by cop” after he repeatedly pointed an air rifle at police. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘We both know how we feel about death and dying’: Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney on their brutally honest Parkinson’s drama

Written by Vicar of Dibley co-creator Paul Mayhew-Archer, who has the disease, Onwards and Sideways sees the actors play a couple who bond over their diagnoses – a devastating subject but laced with humour too, they say Ahead of production on their first job together, Rhys Ifans and Laura Linney didn’t undergo the standard “chemistry read” to make sure they got on. Which is remarkable, given what their characters would have to do to each other in Onwards and Sideways. In the Norfolk-set BBC film directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love), Ifans would have to nearly throttle Linney while in

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Pay Attention by Laura Kuenssberg review – a BBC reporter’s howl of frustration

After more than two decades of studied neutrality, the journalist delivers some home truths about modern politics Laura Kuenssberg always swore she would never write a book. Amid all the vitriol hurled her way, the BBC’s political editor turned presenter has largely kept her counsel. She rarely complained even when she needed security to do her job unobstructed at Labour party conference under Jeremy Corbyn, or had to run the gauntlet of aggressive Brexit protesters outside parliament, or when a creepy unnamed minister tried to inveigle her into his hotel room for what an appalled Kuenssberg c

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Alex Garland’s Elden Ring adaptation is on course to be Hollywood’s goriest ever fantasy movie

The expansive project has hype and money behind it – but how do you avoid it falling into the disappointment trap so many films end up stumbling into? If the history of failed Hollywood fantasy projects over the past 20 years has taught us anything, it is that transporting audiences to another world is only half the battle: you also have to give them a reason to spend several hours there. The Golden Compass diluted Philip Pullman’s theological bite, Warcraft thought that just explaining its world would make us care about it, and The Dark Tower compressed Stephen King’s sprawling mythology so r

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘They said we incited riots’: explosive punks Bad Brains on drugs, self-destruction and recording from jail

Young, black and fuelled by self-help mantras, they were reputedly the best live band on Earth. As their wild first sessions are rereleased, the group talk about scaring club owners – and getting kicked out of the UK Old punks might not agree on much – who was first, who was fastest, where to file the Faith/Void split LP in their record collection – but for those who saw them in their prime, Bad Brains were, unequivocally, the best live band on the planet. YouTube footage bears this out: frontman HR, born Paul D Hudson, is equal parts straining sinew and raw electricity as he bucks and contort

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Teenage violinist wins BBC Young Musician 2026, after first all-female final

Judges hail Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity A teenage violinist has won the BBC Young Musician competition 2026, in the first all-female final in the competition’s 48-year history. The judges, Joanna MacGregor, Ben Gernon and Errollyn Wallen, hailed Sofia Demetriades’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto as full of insights, poetry and maturity. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Juan Atkins, pioneer of Detroit techno sound, dies aged 64

US artist known as Model 500 and as one half of the duo Cybotron had huge influence on dance music worldwide Juan Atkins, one of the pioneers of Detroit techno and a huge influence on dance music more widely, has died aged 64. His agency, Greensmith Artists, confirmed the news to the dance music website Resident Advisor, saying Atkins had been found unresponsive in a hotel room in Mexico City prior to a performance there, and was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital. Continue reading...

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Romeo + Juliet at 30: how Baz Luhrmann made teens fall in love with Shakespeare

The maximalist, heart over head adaptation of the romantic tragedy made stars of its leads and became an English teacher’s most trusted weapon for Bard-averse students Romeo + Juliet is not the most renowned or beloved of Shakespeare’s plays, but it is perhaps the most foundational. The 16th-century tragedy, a story of love-addled teenagers and white-hot resentment, is often an English student’s first introduction to the bard’s oeuvre – more accessible and relatable to teens, with its plaintive lust and histrionic mood swings, than the more austere machinations in, say, Macbeth, Hamlet or Othe

The Guardian
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