6 h. ago Stephen Mangan: Maybe middle aged panic is setting in, I’m clinging to whatever fitness I have

Ahead of World Book Day (March 6), Lauren Taylor speaks to the actor, comedian and writer about his relationship with books, running and fame.

Politics

52 h. ago The Last Showgirl review – Pamela Anderson dazzles as Vegas dancer hitting midlife

Anderson’s depiction of an older performer’s struggles, as youth slips away and family fractures, rivals Demi Moore’s in The SubstanceWarm and generous performances carry this good-natured movie from director Gia Coppola; it’s actually the sort of approachable, actor-led drama for grownups that pundits complain Hollywood doesn’t produce any more. Pamela Anderson stars as Shelly, a middle-aged Las Vegas showgirl and 30-year veteran of a cheesy spectacle called Le Razzle Dazzle, gamely putting on the feathers and the sparkly rhinestones and revealing costumes alongside dancers in their teens – all for dwindling audiences who are looking for novelties and more overtly sexualised shows elsewhere.Shelly is stunned to learn that the show is getting canned and must now figure out what to do with her life and how to repair relations with her grownup daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), who always felt she came second in her mother’s life to the pseudo-glamour of her nudie showbiz vocation. It is...

Events

6 d. ago Bong Joon Ho: ‘I wish I had Ken Loach’s energy, but I’m just thinking about nap time’

How do you follow up an Oscar winner like Parasite? If you’re the South Korean auteur, you make a sci-fi satire where Robert Pattinson dies over and over again. The director discusses the inspirational Loach and Mike Leigh and why it’s hard being a ‘middle-aged film-maker’We are in the run-up to the release of Bong Joon Ho’s latest, Mickey 17, and Warner Bros has got the Oscar-winning Korean director stashed away in what appears to be some kind of basement storage room, with grey-painted brickwork and exposed wiring. In fact, this room could pass for one of the “gritty and kind of nasty” cargo-container-packed cabins of his film’s spaceship setting.Not that anyone is complaining. Bong, who speaks good English but prefers to conduct interviews via his longtime interpreter Sharon Choi, appears cheerful throughout our conversation, taking occasional sips from a takeaway coffee cup, while dressed in his usual arthouse auteur uniform of a slate-grey blazer over a black T-shirt. He i...

Politics

6 d. ago ‘The essential ingredient is openess’: Curtis Sittenfeld on the deep joy of midlife friendship

Friendships become closer as you get older argues the novelist, because by middle age everyone has faced dramatic challenges, disappointments and sorrows – and being honest about them is a powerful point of bondingMy ninth book is published this week, and in recent years I’ve described my writing like this: I take care with my sentences, but exquisite prose isn’t my goal. My goal is to give the reader the feeling that you – and by you, I mean me – have when you’re going for a long walk with a close friend, and the friend says: “The craziest thing just happened to me.” What?! You think and possibly say. Tell me immediately! And then what happened, and then what happened? As a writer, this is the urgency I’m chasing, this is the investment, the richness of emotion, the confiding and closeness and caring.A line in Miranda July’s 2024 novel All Fours, a book I’ve discussed with many friends, perfectly captures for me this sense of participating in a bottomless conversation: “I was often...

Events

6 d. ago ‘The essential ingredient is openness’: Curtis Sittenfeld on the deep joy of midlife friendship

Friendships become closer as you get older argues the novelist, because by middle age everyone has faced dramatic challenges, disappointments and sorrows – and being honest about them is a powerful point of bondingMy ninth book is published this week, and in recent years I’ve described my writing like this: I take care with my sentences, but exquisite prose isn’t my goal. My goal is to give the reader the feeling that you – and by you, I mean me – have when you’re going for a long walk with a close friend, and the friend says: “The craziest thing just happened to me.” What?! You think and possibly say. Tell me immediately! And then what happened, and then what happened? As a writer, this is the urgency I’m chasing, this is the investment, the richness of emotion, the confiding and closeness and caring.A line in Miranda July’s 2024 novel All Fours, a book I’ve discussed with many friends, perfectly captures for me this sense of participating in a bottomless conversation: “I was often...

Events

8 d. ago I've sacrificed everything to stay this thin at 63. Ozempic is cheating... this is how women should keep the weight off: KATE MULVEY

At the weekend, I attended a lunch with a gaggle of middle-aged women, we spent a leisurely two hours laughing and tucking into a traditional roast - well, all except me.

Politics

1 week ago The Ozempic BLACK MARKET: how brazen sellers with no medical qualifications are selling slimming jabs online

Alongside adverts for a second-hand handbag, high-heeled shoes and a Tiffany pendant, the before and after pictures of a middle-aged slimmer immediately stand out.

Politics