76 m. ago My unexpected Pride icon: Free Willy helped me see the radical power of coming out

An oppressed orca breaking free to find its true family? It may not be obviously queer, but I’ve found much comfort in Willy and Jesse’s story in this filmI don’t know precisely when I first watched Free Willy. But I do remember that the film was central to a childhood obsession with whales – orcas, specifically – that followed me well into adulthood. (I still remember a lot of random facts, such as “killer whales can live up to 90 years old!” and “their pregnancies are 17 months long!”)Released in 1993, just a few months after I was born, the film follows Jesse – a moody 12-year-old foster kid with abandonment issues – and his unlikely friendship with Willy, an orca confined in a far-too-small pool at a local marine park. Jesse and Willy have a lot in common. Both are antisocial, stubborn and mistrustful, but form a close bond – one that sees Jesse determined to free Willy from the park where he is being exploited for profit by an evil businessman. It’s a classic good v evil tale –...

Politics

76 m. ago We are Nobel laureates, scientists, writers and artists. The threat of fascism is back | Open letter

As in 1925, when Mussolini was in power, we must openly defy the brutal imposition of the fascist ideologyOn 1 May 1925, with Benito Mussolini already in power, a group of Italian intellectuals publicly denounced his fascist regime in an open letter. The signatories – scientists, philosophers, writers and artists – took a stand in support of the essential tenets of a free society: the rule of law, personal liberty and independent thinking, culture, art and science. Their open defiance against the brutal imposition of the fascist ideology – at great personal risk – proved that opposition was not only possible, but necessary. Today, 100 years later, the threat of fascism is back – and so we must summon that courage and defy it again.Fascism emerged in Italy a century ago, marking the advent of modern dictatorship. Within a few years, it spread across Europe and the world, taking different names but maintaining similar forms. Wherever it seized power, it undermined the separation of po...

Events

2 h. ago Assassination attempt in Colombia sparks fears of return to bloody past: ‘It’s a devastating moment’

Attack on presidential candidate is reminiscent of some of the darkest chapters of the country’s historyThe attempted assassination of a Colombian presidential hopeful has reignited fears of a return to a bloody past when organized crime and rebel groups murdered candidates, journalists, judges with impunity.The shooting of Miguel Uribe Turbay was one of the most serious attacks against a high-ranking politician in Colombia this century, and comes as a deteriorating security crisis grips the Andean nation. Continue reading...

Events

2 h. ago Amazon Prime viewers 'in tears' after watching 'devastating' war film

The war film still has people talking years after its release

Politics

2 h. ago Archaeologists uncover France’s deepest shipwreck: ‘As if time froze’

Researchers suspect vessel was carrying cargo of ceramics made in Italian coastal region of Liguria in the 16th century

Politics

2 h. ago Keira Knightley reflects on negative consequence of Pirates of the Caribbean films

‘It was, in my 21-year-old head, quite confusing,’ British star said

Politics

3 h. ago Star Wars boss calms fan concern at screening of original cut disliked by George Lucas

‘Remarkable’ showing presented movie exactly how it was experienced by audiences in 1977

Events

3 h. ago Grey's Anatomy's Eric Dane fights tears in emotional update after 'crushing' ALS diagnosis

Grey's Anatomy and Euphoria star Eric Dance was emotional as he gave a candid update on his health following his devastating ALS diagnosis earlier in the year

Politics

4 h. ago Attenborough’s Ocean is the film I’ve been waiting my whole career for – now the world must act on its message | George Monbiot

The documentary shows the damage that fishing does to our planet. So why does the industry still hold governments to ransom?I have been saying this a lot recently: “At last!” At last, a mainstream film bluntly revealing the plunder of our seas. At last, a proposed ban on bottom trawling in so-called “marine protected areas” (MPAs). At last, some solid research on seabed carbon and the vast releases caused by the trawlers ploughing it up. But still I feel that almost everyone is missing the point.David Attenborough’s Ocean film, made for National Geographic, is the one I’ve been waiting for all my working life. An epoch ago, when I worked in the BBC’s Natural History Unit in the mid-1980s, some of us lobbied repeatedly for films like this, without success. Since then, even programmes that purport to discuss marine destruction have carefully avoided the principal cause: the fishing industry. The BBC’s Blue Planet II and Blue Planet Live series exemplified the organisation’s perennial ...

Politics

5 h. ago Horror moment teen girls surround man, 75, beating him to death while filming on phone

CCTV footage caught the moment Fredi Rivero, 75, was attacked by a group of three teenagers by a London bus stop - he was rushed to hospital where he later died

Events

6 h. ago WWE wrestler set to make her acting debut alongside former Marvel star Jonathan Majors

Jade Cargill will play a villain in new action-thriller ‘True Threat’

Politics

6 h. ago ‘Difficult love’: Spanish publisher reprints groundbreaking book of Lorca’s homoerotic sonnets

Federico García Lorca’s poems were printed anonymously in 1983 after being hidden away by family for 50 yearsIn the autumn of 1983, dozens of carefully chosen readers received an envelope containing a slim, red booklet of sonnets that had been locked away since they were written almost 50 years earlier by the most famous Spanish poet of the 20th century.While those behind the initiative gave no clue as to their identities, their purpose was made abundantly clear in the dedication on the booklet’s final page: “This first edition of the Sonnets of Dark Love is being published to remember the passion of the man who wrote them.” Continue reading...

Politics

7 h. ago A Trick of the Mind by Daniel Yon review – explaining psychology’s most important theory

An immensely readable dive into the ‘predictive processing’ hypothesis, our best guess as to how the mind really worksThe process of perception feels quite passive. We open our eyes and light floods in; the world is just there, waiting to be seen. But in reality there is an active element that we don’t notice. Our brains are always “filling in” our perceptual experience, supplementing incoming information with existing knowledge. For example, each of us has a spot at the back of our eye where there are no light receptors. We don’t see the resulting hole in our field of vision because our brains ignore it. The phenomenon we call “seeing” is the result of a continuously updated model in your mind, made up partly of incoming sensory information, but partly of pre-existing expectations. This is what is meant by the counter­intuitive slogan of contemporary cognitive science: “perception is a controlled hallucination”.A century ago, someone with an interest in psycholo...

Science

7 h. ago Week in wildlife: a flying zebra, chilling pelicans and a ghost elephant

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Politics

7 h. ago We hunted Glastonbury ghosts in 'occult capital' with horny monks and 'death doorway'

EXCLUSIVE: It’s the scene of the world’s most famous music festival – but Glastonbury, Somerset, is home to more than rock legends. Join our spine-chilling tour of the town with more spectres than you can shake a tambourine at...

Events

7 h. ago An underseen Tom Hardy movie with 91% Rotten Tomatoes score is airing on TV tonight

The actor has appeared in only a few films this decade

Sport

9 h. ago ‘I’m not The Rock, right?’ Julianne Moore on action movies, appropriate parenting and twinning with Tilda Swinton

Ahead of her new film – in which she fights, dives and wrangles horses – the Oscar-winning actor discusses sunburn, age-gaps and hanging from helicoptersJulianne Moore has played some right mothers in her time. There was Amber Waves in Boogie Nights, whose pornography career and cocaine addiction costs her access to her child. Or Maude, the outre artist – “My work has been commended as being strongly vaginal” – whose determination to conceive drives much of in The Big Lebowski. Moore was the infernal, domineering mother – the Piper Laurie role – in the 2013 remake of Carrie, and a lesbian cheating on her partner with the sperm donor who fathered their children in The Kids Are All Right. In May December, the most recent of the five pictures she has made with her artistic soulmate, the director Todd Haynes, she became pregnant by a 13-year-old boy, then married and raised a family with him after her release from prison. Shocking, perhaps, but then she had already played a socialite wi...

Politics

9 h. ago Experience: ‘I live as William Morris for three months a year’

It’s made me feel it’s OK to be an artist with a social purpose, though my wife hates the beardI have spent the first three months of the past six years trying to become the 19th-century designer and activist William Morris. I grow my hair and beard to look like him, while immersing myself in his work.On 24 March – his birthday – I dress as Morris and finish the quarter with some kind of absurd performance to highlight pressing social issues that he was concerned about, and that I want more people to focus on today. Continue reading...

Politics

12 h. ago Rivals author Jilly Cooper's surprising verdict on intimacy coordinators as Danny Dyer says very raunchy new series has so many sex scenes it 'hired every coach in the UK'

The actor said there is so much bonking in Rivals 2 - which is currently filming - that they have hired every intimacy coach in the UK.

Culture

12 h. ago How Harry and Meghan have hired 'divisive' PR head who oversaw mortifying Royal programme that showed Diana's ghost and Harry as a Nazi: Shock move revealed in full by ALISON BOSHOFF

She oversaw global publicity for storylines such as Harry in Nazi fancy dress, Diana's controversial Panorama interview and 'ghost' Diana talking to the Queen.

Events