4 d. ago Pray that this outlandish new social policy will fail to take flight | Phillip Inman

Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk Steve Coogan wants ­people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider. Continue reading...

Events

4 d. ago It’s not poverty that’s breeding the new populism. It’s wealth | Phillip Inman

Analysts trace a link between financial security and a troubling, increasingly devil-may-care, attitude to political risk Steve Coogan wants ­people to see his new film, The Penguin Lessons, and think about how they might be living in a wealthy cocoon, disengaged from the world.The film’s central character – a Briton teaching expat children in Argentina – rescues a penguin and tries to help local people persecuted by the rightwing government. Re-enacting a true story, Coogan is showing how it’s possible to be involved in local communities even when the protagonist is an outsider. Continue reading...

Politics

6 d. ago Steve Coogan isn’t earnest enough for the dire political comedy The Penguin Lessons

Finally a film that asks ‘could an adorable flightless bird convince Alan Partridge to stand up to Argentina’s military dictatorship?’

Politics

7 d. ago Steve Coogan on his very unusual new comedy: ‘The penguin takes the edge off the fascism’

In ‘The Penguin Lessons’, the man behind Alan Partridge plays a school teacher in military-occupied Argentina who forms an unlikely bond with a seabird. Such tonal extremes required a delicate hand, he and his co-star Jonathan Pryce tell Annabel Nugent

Politics

8 d. ago The Penguin Lessons review – Steve Coogan seabird comedy drama tries to sell feelgood mood

Coogan does his best, but there’s a tonal mismatch here: the animal-teaches-lonely-human narrative jars with a depiction of lives in totalitarian ArgentinaHere is a well-meaning, awkward tonal jumble of a movie, based on the bestselling memoir by former teacher Tom Michell; it is a quirky true-story heart warmer, in which an adorable penguin is apparently supposed to redeem not merely the human hero’s personal heartbreak but maybe even the agony of Argentina during the 70s junta. It stars Steve Coogan, who has often in the past shown brilliant technique as a straight actor, and in Philomena with Judi Dench proved he is perfectly capable of carrying an un-ironised emotional story. But his performance here is bafflingly underpowered and opaque, as if he is slightly perplexed by the script he’s been given.Coogan plays Tom, who takes a job in Peronist Argentina in 1976, teaching English at a stuffy private school for the sons of wealthy expatriates, and is wary of the overbearing headte...

Events

9 d. ago Steve Coogan: ‘Art is what humanises us, and it can’t be measured on a spreadsheet’

Steve Coogan and the cast and crew behind charming new movie The Penguin Lessons share what they learned from being on set with a penguin.

Politics

1 week ago Inside the fight to save California’s dying sea lions from toxic algae: ‘We’re like 911 operators’

The chance of the marine animal’s survival after domoic acid poisoning is 50-50, and this year, the outbreak has sickened hundredsIt was just after 8am on Tuesday, a thick morning fog still clinging to the California coastline, and SeaWorld’s animal rescue team had already made their first save of the day: a hefty, sick-looking sea lion that had been waddling dangerously close to a four-lane highway in downtown San Diego.Now, in a private area of SeaWorld that few of the theme park’s thousands of daily visitors ever get to see, the rescue team was in full “triage” mode. Half a dozen staff members maneuvered the caged sea lion off the bed of a truck, and grabbed IV bags full of fluids and vitamins. Continue reading...

Events

2 w. ago The Penguin Lessons is just the latest film that teaches us how animals rescue men from loneliness

The comedy, about a curmudgeon played by Steve Coogan and his waddling new friend, joins a subgenre of movies from King Kong to John Wick – in which men are emotionally and socially rescued by animalsThe penguin at the centre of The Penguin Lessons, a new movie by Peter Cattaneo, is nothing if not hard-working. The film, adapted from the 2015 memoir by Tom Michell, uses the political turmoil of Argentina in 1976 as a backdrop for the personal transformation of an English teacher at a boys’ school. Michell (Steve Coogan) is an idle curmudgeon when he rescues an oil-drenched Magellan penguin from a beach in Uruguay in an attempt to impress an attractive woman. She leaves, but he is stuck with the bird, whom he duly names Juan Salvador, and who thaws him out sufficiently to bond with students and colleagues, process past trauma and rekindle a political idealism.Naturally, there are hurdles for Juan Salvador to clear before the interspecies friendship spreads its wings. Michell tries a ...

Events

2 w. ago The Penguin Lessons is the latest film to teach us animals rescue men from loneliness

The comedy, about a curmudgeon played by Steve Coogan and his waddling new friend, joins a subgenre of movies from King Kong to John Wick – in which men are emotionally and socially rescued by animalsThe penguin at the centre of The Penguin Lessons, a new movie by Peter Cattaneo, is nothing if not hard-working. The film, adapted from the 2015 memoir by Tom Michell, uses the political turmoil of Argentina in 1976 as a backdrop for the personal transformation of an English teacher at a boys’ school. Michell (Steve Coogan) is an idle curmudgeon when he rescues an oil-drenched Magellan penguin from a beach in Uruguay in an attempt to impress an attractive woman. She leaves, but he is stuck with the bird, whom he duly names Juan Salvador, and who thaws him out sufficiently to bond with students and colleagues, process past trauma and rekindle a political idealism.Naturally, there are hurdles for Juan Salvador to clear before the interspecies friendship spreads its wings. Michell tries a ...

Events

2 w. ago I went searching for the grandmother I never met. Under a tree where she once sat with Leonard Cohen, I broke | Gina Chick

When adoption laws changed in Australia, we discovered her name: Charmian Clift. I felt instant recognition. This explained everythingGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailWhen I was young, I had no idea that my mother was such an extraordinary woman. She was just my mother, swirling in and out of the house, singing to her jonquil bulbs, tripping over the animals I rescued, all while reading five books at once. If she was in the kitchen, my sisters and I hid downstairs as she clattered and crashed all the saucepans and swore like a sailor at the latest ruined batch of biscuits.She wept at whatever devastation the nightly news delivered into the lounge room. She loved and was loved in return by my father, Douggie. She birthed four babes, grew the surviving three into formidable women and instilled in us a fierce belief that there was nothing we could not do. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Steve Coogan greeted penguins every day of filming for The Penguin Lessons

The film follows the true story of an Englishman who rescues a penguin from an oil-slicked beach in a divided Argentina.

Politics

2 w. ago Exotic animal owner claims seven tigers seized from his property were for ‘emotional support’

Karl Mitchell claimed to have rescued the animals from Tiger King star Joe Exotic

Politics

3 w. ago Living Together review – how Austrians teach immigrants to find their place in society

New arrivals sit in drab spaces and are learn how to fit in, in a film that quietly addresses the costs of integration to minority groupsThomas Fürhapter’s documentary sheds light on the challenges of adjusting to a new culture as it follows a series of “integration classes” offered to immigrants in Vienna. The film opens in the nondescript corridors of an administrative building, which lead into sun-filled but impersonal meeting rooms where these sessions take place. As the participants discuss their worries and uncertainties, these colourless spaces transform into sites of passion and community.Conducted in multiple languages, the seminars grapple with culturally specific issues faced by different minority groups. Topics of discussion range from Austrian ways of greeting, to more serious concerns such as racism and domestic abuse. In talking about the present and the future, people also reveal pieces of their past: some moved to Austria for love, others fled the horrors of war. De...

Events

4 w. ago Man arrested after his mother, 92, found living in ‘deplorable’ conditions with 38 cats

The animals were taken in by nearby rescue facilities

Events

4 w. ago Animal sanctuary opens ‘forever home’ for five lions rescued from Ukraine

Cam Whitnall, managing director of The Big Cat Sanctuary, said they are relieved ‘to have these lions safe and settled’ in Kent.

Events