44 h. ago Jason Donovan talks Wales, The Rocky Horror Show, In It Together and his one man show Doin' Fine

The Australian entertainer will visit south Wales three times in the next year to showcase his 35-year career in music, theatre, TV and film

Events

4 d. ago Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII review – mesmerically peculiar portrait of band on cusp of greatness

Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason are space rock whippets in the burning Italian sun in this outrageously indulgent yet vivid and beguiling music documentaryHere they are: Pink Floyd in 1971, amazingly young, amazingly thin, like four space-rock whippets standing mysteriously on their hind legs in the burning Italian sun. Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason are performing “live at Pompeii” in this mesmerically peculiar and outrageously indulgent music documentary from film-maker Adrian Maben, now on rerelease over half a century later, available on freakily large Imax screens undreamt of in the 70s. The music and the atmosphere are an irresistible fan-madeleine for those who can remember referring to them solemnly as “the Floyd” (ahem).The band are shown performing live in Pompeii’s ancient Roman amphitheatre in the late afternoon, but not to an audience as you might assume, but weirdly and almost haughtily alone. The banks of amplifiers are pounding out the mu...

Culture

5 d. ago Celebrity Traitors cast 2025: the 20 stars ‘confirmed’ for BBC show

Stars of the sport, film, music and TV world are heading to The Traitors castle 🔪

Politics

5 d. ago ‘Be playful, try new things!’ The Southbank Centre’s Mark Ball on his new festival, Multitudes

The arts centre’s artistic director is on a mission to bring new audiences to the joys of classical music. He explains why mixing it with circus, grime, poetry, and film might be the way to do itCan you name the UK’s top five most visited attractions? A 2024 survey placed the British Museum and Natural History Museum in the top two spots, then Windsor Great Park and the Tate Modern. No surprises there. But the fifth is perhaps less expected: the Southbank Centre, with 3.7 million annual visitors.“If you come down in the summer, it’s like a 21st-century version of the Victorian pleasure garden,” says its artistic director, Mark Ball. “It’s like the whole world is here. Skateboarders mixed with poets mixed with the classical musicians, mixed with the dancers – it’s what gives this space its vibrancy and why I love it so much.” Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Neil Young: Coastal review – music legend on the road, filmed by his wife Daryl Hannah

Hannah’s second feature about her husband follows him on tour, but the offstage footage is rather less compelling than the musicDaryl Hannah has made another film (after Paradox in 2018) about her musician husband Neil Young; this one is about his recent 15-date solo tour of outdoor arenas on the US west coast. It works best when the living legend is on stage, cheerfully and unselfconsciously performing just like it’s 1972 and regaling the whooping audience with his comments: “Steve Stills gave me this guitar – I wrote a lot of songs on this sucker!”; “I’m so happy I was here before AI was born!” He really is utterly open and unpretentious.But the movie itself tests the fanbase loyalty to the limits by being pointlessly and uninterestingly shot in arthouse black-and-white (though it exasperatingly bleeds out into colour over the closing credits) and by including an awful lot of material on the tour bus which is – how to put this? – not very interesting. Neil likes to ride up front w...

Culture

2 w. ago ‘The Citizen Kane of rock movies’: glam rockers Slade and their bid for cinema greatness

Fifty years ago, the Black Country legends made Slade in Flame, about a band screwed by the music business. It tanked and almost finished them. Now, as it’s re-released, the film is being seen as a prescient gemDaryl Easlea was eight years old when he got the 4A bus with his mate Graham down to the Odeon in Southend-on-Sea to see his favourite rock band make the leap from vinyl to celluloid. After 12 consecutive top 10 singles – including six No 1s – Slade had finally made their first movie, Slade in Flame. It has just turned 50.What young Easlea saw in 1975 was not the fun-packed adventures of a happy-go-lucky glam rock foursome, but a dour, downbeat film about being chewed up and spat out by the music industry. Easlea, who would grow up to be Slade’s biographer, didn’t care. Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Taylor Swift fan who forgot lyrics told symptoms were 'normal for women'

Hannah-Ireland, 24, had been an outgoing music and film fan - but her behaviour changed

Politics

3 w. ago Nick Rockett holds off I Am Maximus to win thrilling 2025 Grand National – live reaction

Willie Mullins-trained horse ridden to victory by sonTom Jenkins’s best pictures from AintreeAnd send Simon an email with your thoughtsWilliam Hill Handicap Hurdle (1.20pm)And they’re off Jipcot, always held up in the past, is up there in the very early stages Building Bridges has taken over the lead Dartan and Timmy Tuesday are also prominent Act Of Authority and Double Powerful are at the back no fallers with a circuit to go and not much change in the running order for now but Bill Joyce has gone at the first hurdle in the back straight he’s up and going on riderless Building Bridges has kicked clear with Dartan who is under pressure Timmy Tuesday comes with a challenge Deep Cave comes late and gets there close home.I love that ITV still open up their National day coverage (as the Beeb used to) with the theme music from the 1984 film Champions based on the victory of Bob Champion and Aldaniti in 1981. I still haven’t seen the movie but I found it for a quid last year on DVD. Conti...

Events

3 w. ago Did John and Yoko split because of Richard Nixon? The making of revelatory music film One to One

The director of One to One: John & Yoko reveals how he was given access to a trove of intimate and family archive material that changes how we see the star couplePeople are usually at their most interesting when they are in flux – uncertain of the way forward, of what life they ought to build. That was the case with John Lennon and Yoko Ono when they arrived in New York in 1971. They were both fleeing England – the recriminations around the Beatles breakup; the terrible misogyny and racism levelled at Ono – but also running towards the optimism and creative excitement of the New York art scene.This is the period I have tried to recreate in my film One to One: John & Yoko – using a plethora of previously unheard phone recordings, home movies and archive. It’s an unconventional film in many ways, pitching the viewer headfirst into the life, politics and music of the time without the usual music documentary guardrails. At its heart is the One to One concert that the couple...

Culture

3 w. ago Help! Why are none of the new Beatles cast from Liverpool? | Peter Bradshaw

So Sam Mendes has cast his Beatles tetralogy, but none are from Merseyside. Don’t worry, I’ve just invented the Beatles Cinematic Universe Sam Mendes has announced the cast for his colossal four-film Beatles extravaganza: Harris Dickinson as John, Paul Mescal as Paul, Barry Keoghan as Ringo and Joseph Quinn as George – and to tumultuous acclaim he brought his Fab Four on stage at the CinemaCon event in Las Vegas, a now well-established affair in the film world, incidentally, satirised in a forthcoming episode of Seth Rogen’s TV comedy The Studio.I’m sorry to say, however, that Sam has almost entirely ignored the casting suggestions that I made in February last year. For what this is worth, I went with Leo Woodall as Paul, Finn Wolfhard as George, Harry Melling as Ringo and Barry Keoghan as John (though Barry got Ringo in the end). But I like to think that Sam Mendes and his producer Pippa Harris were thinking on more or less the same lines as me. Interestingly, there are no American...

Politics