65 m. ago Jade: That’s Showbiz Baby! review – former Little Mix star thrives in chaos on an idiosyncratic debut

(Sony)Jade Thirlwall offers a wild ride through electroclash, Eurovision drama and emotive synth-pop – albeit one she can’t quite maintain for a whole albumLast month, the indefatigable Vice magazine published a piece on the “summer of British chaos”, documenting a scene of deranged social media provocateurs existing at the crispiest fringes of our nation’s cooked identity. Writer Clive Martin defined these graven images of the algorithm as being regionally specific, lurid, rowdy, funny and hedonistic. As a former member of Little Mix, a girl band put together via public vote on The X Factor, Jade Thirlwall might not seem like the likeliest bedfellow of this unhinged movement. But the South Shields pop star’s debut solo single, last year’s Angel of My Dreams, dodged focus-grouped smoothness to present a sublimely whacked-out, thoroughly British pop vision that felt like spinning through someone else’s for you page and realising they exist in a markedly different universe from your o...

Events

66 m. ago Married At First Sight UK cast in full including musician, dentist and pro dancer

The new series of Married at First Sight UK will return to E4 later this month

Culture

98 m. ago Luke Humphries beats Josh Rock to successfully defend Czech Open title

A finely-executed final leg was enough to put down a brave challenge from Rock and claim the £30,000 prize.

Politics

2 h. ago London city council, former mayor asked for records as state auditor opens ‘review’

London city council, former mayor asked for records as state auditor opens ‘review’  FOX 56 News

Politics

4 h. ago EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert review – Baz Luhrmann’s electric yet avoidant documentary

Toronto film festival: the bombastic director’s second film about the music legend shows the singer at his most mesmerizing but the picture remains incompleteBaz Luhrmann now has two Elvis movies under his bedazzled belt. The first is his epic biopic starring Austin Butler and now he has unleashed another called EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, remixing archival material with never-before-seen footage from the singer’s residency in Las Vegas. What’s remarkable about them both, apart from the director’s obvious affinity for his subject’s showmanship, is his refusal across so many hours of jiggling and swivelling to meaningfully hold Elvis to account.Luhrmann’s Oscar-nominated 2022 film acknowledged Elvis’s cultural appropriation: how his phenomenal success owed so much to the R&B, gospel and rock he grew up around and the racist institutions that put him on a pedestal while holding down the Black artists that birthed and gave that music its soul. The movie also painted Elvis as a ...

Culture

5 h. ago While responding to public concern over migration, the government must not forget its duty to refugees

Editorial: Labour are saying that migrants could be moved to military sites, but they should not try to ‘out-Farage’ Nigel Farage

Politics

5 h. ago Nigel Farage tax return refusal dubbed 'another leaf from Trump's playbook'

Nigel Farage said he was 'not inclined' to publish his tax return despite other senior politicians doing so - with TUC boss Paul Nowak saying he must prove he's on the side of working Brits

Politics

6 h. ago The Guardian view on the ‘war on drugs’: Donald Trump is turning a failed metaphor into a more dangerous reality | Editorial

The strike on a speedboat allegedly containing Venezuelan drug traffickers may be performative, but sets a frightening precedentMore than five decades ago, Richard Nixon launched a “war on drugs”. The drugs won. Now Donald Trump is turning a failed metaphor into a worse reality.On Tuesday the US president claimed that the military had killed 11 drug traffickers from Venezuela, posting footage of the strike that US officials said took place on a speedboat in international waters in the Caribbean. The administration supplied no evidence for its claim that the boat contained Tren de Aragua members, or drugs, and gave varying accounts of its destination. It also warned that there was more to come, with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, arguing that intercepting boats had not curbed the drugs problem: “What will stop them is when you blow them up.” Earlier this year, Mr Trump secretly ordered the use of military force against cartels internationally. Continue reading...

Events

6 h. ago The Guardian view on the ‘twin’ Vermeers: how to spot a masterpiece | Editorial

Two versions of the Guitar Player raise important questions of attribution. In our age of fake images, authenticity in art is more vital than ever“How do you know how much to pay if you don’t know what it is worth?” So ends Theft: A Love Story by the Australian novelist Peter Carey. This scabrous riff on the slipperiness of cultural value in the international art scene asks: is a copy so good that even experts mistake it for the original painting still a fake?Questions of authenticity and attribution are behind a new display by English Heritage at Kenwood House in London to mark the 350th anniversary of the death of Johannes Vermeer. For the first time in 300 years, two nearly identical paintings of the Guitar Player, one signed by the Dutch master, the other on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and until recently believed to be a 17th- or 18th-century copy, will hang side by side. Experts have puzzled over the relationship between the two paintings for 100 years. Now visito...

Politics

7 h. ago Good Fortune review – Aziz Ansari’s big comeback comedy struggles to find big laughs

Toronto film festival: The multi-hyphenate’s directorial debut has noble intentions in its timely class commentary but his brand of humour makes for an awkward fitThe absence of big-screen comedies, once an almost weekly occurrence, has become such a widely complained-about issue that the rare novelty of one actually being made has turned into a marketing tool. Last month’s remake of The Naked Gun employed a campaign that directly addressed this problem, with an ad that played like a PSA about such a lack and why supporting one was of societal importance (the plea only mildly worked, with the film finishing with decent, but not quite decent enough, box office). At the Toronto premiere of Aziz Ansari’s Good Fortune, festival chief Cameron Bailey made reference to the now unusual sensation of laughing with an audience, and the actor-writer-director himself has been impressing upon people his desire to make a theatrical comedy in the billion-dollar wake of Barbie. He believes in its im...

Politics

8 h. ago Republican slams Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

Rand Paul blasts ‘thoughtless’ comment after vice-president defends strike against alleged drug traffickersThe Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Republican condemns Vance for ‘despicable’ comments on Venezuelan boat strike

Rand Paul decries ‘thoughtless’ comment after vice-president defends strike against alleged drug traffickersThe Republican senator who heads the homeland security committee has criticized JD Vance for “despicable” comments apparently in support of extrajudicial military killings.“Killing cartel members who poison our fellow citizens is the highest and best use of our military,” the vice-president said in an X post on Saturday, in defense of Tuesday’s US military strike against a Venezuelan boat in the Caribbean Sea, which killed 11 people the administration alleged were drug traffickers. Continue reading...

Politics

8 h. ago Watchdog fails wrongly convicted owing to lack of forensic expertise, experts say

Criminal Cases Review Commission faces criticism over its handling of several high-profile casesThe miscarriage of justice watchdog is failing prisoners appealing against wrongful convictions because it does not have forensic expertise and will not engage with third parties who do, experts have claimed.Advisers to Inside Justice, a miscarriage of justice charity, say that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) relies on legal professionals without a proper understanding of the science that underpins many convictions and appeals. Continue reading...

Events

8 h. ago "GMP made me feel like a criminal because of who my father was"

Paul Massey's daughter has vowed to find answers for her murdered father

Events

8 h. ago Verstappen wins F1 Italian GP as Norris closes gap on Piastri amid pit

Dutchman wins ahead of Lando Norris and Oscar PiastriMcLaren impose orders on drivers after slow pit stopMax Verstappen won the Italian Grand Prix, with a dominant run at Monza for Red Bull. Having fought a frenetic scrap on the opening laps, during which he lost and regained the lead, the Dutchman went on to pound out a lead and control it to the flag.Verstappen beat the McLarens of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri into second and third in a race defined by McLaren once more imposing orders on their drivers in the closing stages that proved controversial. Continue reading...

Politics

9 h. ago Angela Rayner’s exit proves it. Unless Starmer is able to meet this moment, Reform is on the path to power | John Harris

The prime minister increasingly looks like a man next to a burning house, offering to buy a new bookcase and rugSign up for our new weekly newsletter Matters of Opinion, where our columnists and writers will reflect on what they’ve been debating, thinking about, reading and moreOne hundred and twenty miles from Westminster, it felt like I had arrived at the perfect place to understand the meaning of Angela Rayner’s exit from the government: Reform UK’s brief conference, a giddy and surreal gathering of about 10,000 people in a hangar-like box on the edgelands of Birmingham.News of her resignation broke a couple of hours into the event’s first day, and the symbolism was glaring. Among midday pints, onstage pyrotechnics and a huge stand advertising the wonders of investing in gold, a party led by those bumptious public schoolboys Nigel Farage and Richard Tice was suddenly rejoicing in the departure of British politics’ most prominent working-class woman. The news, moreover, only boost...

Politics

9 h. ago Chineke! Orchestra/Heyward review – kaleidoscopic concert combines energy and complexity

Royal Albert Hall, LondonThe ethnically diverse orchestra played with vigour and spirit in a varied programme that included Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Shostakovich and Valerie ColemanThis concert was to have been conducted by Simon Rattle – a mark of the esteem in which leading artists hold Chineke! Orchestra, the trailblazing British ensemble made up of a majority of Black and ethnically diverse musicians. In the event, Charleston-born Jonathon Heyward put his own indelible stamp on a varied yet satisfying program.Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s La Bamboula, a kaleidoscopic dance with roots in the West Indies, played to Chineke!’s strengths. The performed it with vigour and spirit, while Heyward kept its likable blend of late-Victorian tunefulness and proto-Hollywood glitz gossamer-light. You could see why Henry Wood programmed it at the Proms 16 times, making its subsequent 91-year absence inexplicable. Continue reading...

Events

10 h. ago White House's review of Smithsonian content could reach into classrooms nationwide

Some history teachers are concerned about what may come of a White House review of the Smithsonian's public-facing content

Events

10 h. ago California Schemin’ review – James McAvoy’s directorial debut is an unlikely rap tale

Toronto film festival: the actor makes for a hit-and-miss first time film-maker with the undeniably involving true story of Scottish rappers who pretended to be AmericanAt the start of the century, a struggling Scottish rap duo decided to overhaul their image in extreme fashion: they began posing as two Americans from California, and managed to secure themselves a record deal with a label in London. Eventually the hoax was revealed, and one of them released a memoir about the charade. That wild story has now been adapted into a film, California Schemin’, which marks the alternately confident and unsteady directorial debut of actor James McAvoy.McAvoy is a son of Scotland himself, and perhaps feels some kinship with rappers Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd, who found the cultural tastemakers of the south to be indifferent or even hostile to Scottish artists. Though McAvoy has fared just fine as an actor, Bain and Boyd – who would come to be known as Silibil N’ Brains – had a much tougher go...

Politics

10 h. ago Saint Carlo, film festivals and a colourful giant: photos of the weekend

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Culture