6 h. ago The Accidental Spy review – remarkable story of CIA operative abandoned by his handlers

Anthony Wonke’s headlong documentary introduces Blerim Skoro, recruited in post-9/11 New York to become an inside man in the ‘war on terror’, then left in the fieldIn the movies, the classic hazard for the undercover operative is psychological meltdown after getting lost in their new identity. In real life, the dangers seem more prosaic: being treated as an expendable asset and dumped. That was the situation for Muslim Kosovan refugee Blerim Skoro who, despite years spent protecting US national security as a prison informant and al-Qaida mole, was threatened with deportation. His paymasters, the CIA and FBI, don’t emerge creditably from director Anthony Wonke’s headlong, if narrowly focused, account.Skoro seems to have a gift for being in the right or wrong place at the wrong or right time; it’s not obvious which. After deserting from the army during the 1990s Yugoslav war, he wound up as an asylum seeker in New York with a young family. But a new hustle, running drugs for the Alban...

Culture

29 h. ago Blue Road: The Edna O’Brien Story review – richly bittersweet portrait of an Irish literary great

The dizzy highs and painful lows of the late writer’s life are laid bare in Sinéad O’Shea’s moving documentaryHer raw, sexually and emotionally frank prose made her a sensation and got the Irish Catholic church hot under the cassock. She was an eloquent wit, a provocateur who could hold her own in literary circles and in the glittering party circuit of 1960s London. It’s now widely acknowledged that she was one of the greats of Irish literature. But the slightly bitter aftertaste left by this otherwise richly enjoyable documentary portrait of the writer Edna O’Brien comes from the decades of bullying and ridicule she had to endure before her talent was fully recognised.Much of it originated uncomfortably close to home: Blue Road, which features interviews with the 93-year-old O’Brien shortly before her death last year, tells of her tumultuous marriage to fellow writer Ernest Gébler, who was not a man able to graciously accept the fact that his wife’s success had eclipsed his own. Je...

Politics

6 d. ago London: Come get your portrait taken by Irish photographer Eimear Lynch

London: Come get your portrait taken by Irish photographer Eimear Lynch  Dazed

Culture

1 week ago ‘You must read my diaries’: unlocking the private life of Edna O’Brien

Towards the end of her life, the groundbreaking Irish novelist granted film-maker Sinéad O’Shea access to her most personal writing. What she revealed was shocking and inspiring‘Sinéad, you must read my diaries. The most naked ones are in Emory College, Georgia.”This was a voicenote left for me by Edna O’Brien in 2023, after I had started to film a feature documentary with her, granting me access to the most personal work she created in her lifetime: her unpublished diaries.Prurient = itching with lewd desire.Winnow = separate. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Holy Cow review – warmhearted story of smalltown teen turned champion cheesemaker

An 18-year-old from a family of comté-makers is left alone to look after his little sister in Louise Courvoisier’s warm-hearted and optimistic dramaIt doesn’t get more French than a drama about cheese. Holy Cow is the feature debut from director (and part-time farmer) Louise Courvoisier; it’s a social-realist drama that is the opposite of grim and miserable in its warm and often funny telling of a coming-of-age story about a teenager from a struggling family of comté-makers in the remote region of Jura. Courvoisier warms things up nicely with her idealism and optimism, and she gets brilliant performances from her non-professional cast, cows included. The opening scene features a calf sitting in the driver’s seat of a car staring out of the window.Newcomer Clément Faveau (a poultry farmer in real-life) plays 18-year-old Totone, first shown at a country fair so drunk that he jumps on a table and strips naked. Totone lives with his dad, a cheesemaker who drinks heavily, and his wise se...

Events

1 week ago Holy Cow review – warmhearted story of smalltown teen turned competition cheesemaker

An 18-year-old from a family of comté-makers is left alone to look after his little sister in Louise Courvoisier’s warm-hearted and optimistic dramaIt doesn’t get more French than a drama about cheese. Holy Cow is the feature debut from director (and part-time farmer) Louise Courvoisier; it’s a social-realist drama that is the opposite of grim and miserable in its warm and often funny telling of a coming-of-age story about a teenager from a struggling family of comté-makers in the remote region of Jura. Courvoisier warms things up nicely with her idealism and optimism, and she gets brilliant performances from her non-professional cast, cows included. The opening scene features a calf sitting in the driver’s seat of a car staring out of the window.Newcomer Clément Faveau (a poultry farmer in real-life) plays 18-year-old Totone, first shown at a country fair so drunk that he jumps on a table and strips naked. Totone lives with his dad, a cheesemaker who drinks heavily, and his wise se...

Events

1 week ago Love, Charlie: The Rise and Fall of Chef Charlie Trotter review – kitchen tyrant’s story

Celebrity chef who took Chicago by storm in the 90s and noughties, but at a price, in solid if slightly unsatisfying documentaryA chef is yelling at an underling: “I will kill your whole family if you don’t get this right!” The chef is Charlie Trotter, but he is filmed not at work, but for a scene in My Best Friend’s Wedding; Trotter’s cameo in the 1997 movie played up to his reputation as a tyrannical perfectionist. He opened his eponymous restaurant in Chicago aged 27, swiftly becoming a rock-star celebrity chef. In 2012, Trotter dramatically closed the kitchen on its 25th anniversary and died a year later of a stroke aged 54. This documentary about him is a solid if slightly unsatisfying portrait, lacking real depth or flavour.Trotter was born into a wealthy family (raised on hotdogs and meatloaf, jokes his mother). Mostly self-taught, he got an education in gastronomy by eating his way around Europe. In 1987 he opened Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago, bankrolled by his father, Bob, ...

Politics

1 week ago The King of Kings review – Charles Dickens retelling of the Jesus story does a serviceable job

The famous author tells his son and their cat the story of Jesus in this mixed-bag family animation, voiced by an impressive cast This syrupy cartoon account of the life of Jesus (voiced by Oscar Isaac) is narrated, with consummate weirdness, by Charles Dickens (Kenneth Branagh). It’s in fact based on a story Dickens wrote for his children (and wasn’t published until 1934, decades after his death). The idea is that Dickens is telling the story of the New Testament to his young son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) and Walter’s impish cat, explaining to the King Arthur-obsessed Walter how Jesus was the real King of Kings and all that. And so we see Walter and Charles, in their mid-19th-century garb, wandering through scenes of JC’s life nearly two thousand years earlier, from the nativity to the crucifixion – much like Scrooge and his spectral buddies in A Christmas Carol as they wander through past, present and future Christmases. It rather drags out what is already a pretty long running...

Politics

2 w. ago Husband left 'utterly bereft' after wife and two daughters killed in New York crash

North London-raised Natasha Saada and three of her children were crossing the road when they were hit by a blue Audi

Events

2 w. ago Woman from north London and two daughters killed in horror New York car smash

Natasha Saada and three of her children were crossing the road when they were hit by a blue Aldi

Events

2 w. ago Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold review: the real Cora Crippen

The author of The Five, about the Ripper murders, turns her attention to another tragically misunderstood victimIn the canon of British true crime, the case of Dr Crippen routinely gets billed as the first “modern” murder. It wasn’t that there was anything particularly original about the doctor’s motives or methods: in January 1910 he slipped poison into his wife’s bedtime drink so that he could marry his secretary instead. Rather, it was the way that Crippen was caught that turned this run-of-the-mill suburban love triangle into an international cause célèbre.Realising that it would only be a matter of time before his wife’s dismembered remains were discovered in the cellar of the marital home in north London, Crippen and his secretary Ethel Le Neve fled to Canada in disguise. Such was the media hoopla surrounding the case that the sharp-eyed captain of the SS Montrose quickly spotted the runaway lovers among his passengers. This was despite their unconvincing cover story...

Events

2 w. ago Sylvanian Families: The Movie review – bunny goes looking for gift in danger

Set in the bucolically bland world of the toy franchise, the adventures of Freya the rabbit stay well away from any kind of jeopardyIn the very first scene of this film, a woman (well, a female bunny rabbit), broom in hand, sings happily as she sweeps the kitchen floor. Welcome to the wholesome 1950s nostalgia of the Sylvanian Families brand. And while other adaptations of toy franchises whack the audience over the head with irony, skateboards and smart alec gags, this film based on the fuzzy woodland creatures stays firmly on-message. It’s very sweet, slightly dull, and such a throwback that if you stumbled across it on a streaming platform you’d be forgiven for thinking it was made in the 1970s.It’s set in the bucolically blissful land of Sylvania (though one character pronounces it “Syl-van-ia” so perhaps we’ve all been saying it wrong for years), where bunny Freya is on a mission. It’s her mum’s birthday and Freya wants to give her the perfect present. Each of the film’s chapter...

Politics

2 w. ago Story of a Murder by Hallie Rubenhold review – engrossing retelling of ‘the crime of the century’

This account of Dr Crippen’s notorious Edwardian-era killing shifts the focus to the women at the centre of the sordid taleOn the evening of 31 January 1910, two couples dined together at a house in Hilldrop Crescent, on the borders of Holloway, London. The hosts, Dr Crippen and his wife, Belle Elmore, had been entertaining their friends, Clara and Paul Martinetti, until the small hours. After some difficulty fetching a cab, the visitors headed home around 1.30am. It was the last time they, or anyone else, would see Elmore alive. When her colleagues at the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild made inquiries about their friend – she was treasurer of the organisation – Crippen told them she had gone off to America to deal with a family crisis. Some weeks later they were informed she had died of double pneumonia in Los Angeles.Thus was sparked an international murder case, one of the most notorious in Britain, later called “the crime of the century”. But Hallie Rubenhold’s engrossing account begin...

Events

3 w. ago Maybe I’m Amazed by John Harris review – with a little help from John, Paul, George and Ringo

The Guardian journalist’s tender account of how music became a bridge between him and his autistic son, James, is full of wit and wisdomHalfway through Maybe I’m Amazed, there’s a photograph of John Harris’s son, James, with one of his heroes. James is a young-looking 10 in knee-length shorts decorated with stars. Ian Hunter of 1970s rock band Mott the Hoople stands beside him, a hand gently around his shoulder. “Sixty-nine years separate them,” Harris writes. “Here is proof of how songs and their creators find fans in the most unlikely of places.”Maybe I’m Amazed is the story of a growing child’s love of music, but it’s more than that: it’s also about how songs provided a whole world for James, and his family, after his autism diagnosis. It marks a departure for Harris, whose previous journalism, aside from his political work for the Guardian, has involved editing magazines and writing columns, reviews and other books about music. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago People with a Blue Badge urged to claim £195 saving before cut

Blue Badge holders are exempt from paying Vehicle Tax, but a rule change next month could catch 15 people out.

Economics

4 w. ago John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie review – let it be the new gold standard in Beatles studies

The author’s brilliant account of Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting relationship challenges myths, finds new meanings in their music, and even throws up a few surprisesIt is a strange and beguiling experience to find music you have had in your head since childhood reveal new and unsuspected shades of meaning 50 years later. Beatles songs aren’t like most pop songs; instead of fading, they take on a richer colour and nuance, not least because new generations of fans inquire more deeply into what previous listeners might have overlooked or simply misunderstood. One twist of the kaleidoscope and a song we thought we knew suddenly sounds even better than it did the first 100 times we heard it.This is the effect of reading Ian Leslie’s brilliant study of the Beatles’ music, a book that offers not only a lesson in listening (again) but an enthralling narrative of friendship, creative genius and loss. At its centre is the songwriting partnership of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and the ...

Events

last month Deacon Blue on celebrating 40 years and getting back on the road with their Edinburgh gig

Lorraine McIntosh and Ricky Ross talk about their decades making music together

Politics

last month Deacon Blue hit The Great Western Road with a new album and tour

Lorraine McIntosh and Ricky Ross talk about their decades making music together

Events

last month Interview: Deacon Blue on celebrating 40 years and getting back on the road

Lorraine McIntosh and Ricky Ross talk about their decades making music together

Politics