6 d. ago Tony Foster: Painting at the Edge review – going deep in the quest for extreme landscape painting

At 79, the British artist is still skirting real peril, questing across the planet to depict the unspoiled vastnesses shown to grand effect hereTravelling with Tony Foster comes with a disclaimer. According to the terms of the contract signed by the British painter’s prospective companions: “You must have sufficient personal insurance for your body to be flown home in case of fatality.” Or, as he warns beforehand: “There will be times on this journey when you wish you were absolutely anywhere else.” Fortunately, there is an upside to Foster’s deep wilderness expeditions in search of the perfect vantage point for a watercolour. “There will also be times of great joy, when you experience things you never, ever would’ve dreamt of.”Director David Schendel presumably signed in blood before hitching a raft ride with Foster on the Green River in Wyoming and Utah to make this engrossing docu-portrait. The 79-year-old – described by one longtime acquaintance as “two toothpicks in a potato” –...

Politics

7 d. ago Artist and explorer Tony Foster hopes his work moves people to protect planet

The 79-year old explorer is known for his extreme approach to creating large-scale watercolour paintings in the wilderness.

Politics

2 w. ago Football Manager 26 review: A tale of two halves with wonderkid potential hidden deep

EXCLUSIVE: The Daily Star has spent a week with the new Football Manager 26 game, and while there's rage abound, there's also a lot of green shoots for the future

Politics

2 w. ago Is this painting who we now are? The identity grapplings of mystic artist Ben Edge

Vikings, miners, refugees, enslavers and good old Albion himself Ben Edge reveals how his dynamic new understanding of Britain today was triggered by seeing a procession of druids march past a KFCA toy poodle called Lunar arrives at the door of Ben Edge’s studio in a furry blur of excitement. There’s also a full-size fibreglass horse, already halfway through the door. It’s being ridden by a mannequin who is wearing a garland of artificial flowers and, under that, a shirt patterned with green men, Uffington White Horse references and oak leaves. It’s identical to the one worn by the living, breathing artist standing next to me.A highlight of Edge’s upcoming exhibition at London’s Fitzrovia Chapel, the sculpture is titled Where Must We Go in Search of Our Better Selves. It’s a self-portrait like no other, riffing on the magnificent equestrian monuments of the Renaissance, and honouring the Garland King, a figure from the recesses of British folklore, who each May rides through the Der...

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3 w. ago Demi Lovato review, It’s Not That Deep: Plenty of human heart pumping beneath the bangers

If the hooks and vocal commitment feel so steel-cored, it’s perhaps because the pop star is hanging onto them for dear life

Politics

3 w. ago Chain Reactions review – famous fans of Texas Chain Saw Massacre go deep into the legendary slasher

Stephen King, Takashi Miike and Patton Oswalt are among the contributors to this documentary about Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror masterpieceIf you’re programming your own little horror film festival in the run-up to Halloween, and Tobe Hooper’s stone-cold classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre from 1974 is part of the lineup, then this would make a handy follow-up for a night’s viewing. It’s not a making-of movie, although there are snippets of insight into the production’s process; nor is it a meta-commentary at the same sprawling level of Room 237, the delirious doc about The Shining. Instead, Chain Reaction is something in between, constructed in five chapters featuring interviews with five very different, almost random-seeming interlocutors who have strong feelings about The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. These are: comedian Patton Oswalt, film-makers Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi the Killer) and Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Jennifer’s Body), academic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and writer Step...

Events

4 w. ago The Boundless Deep Richard Holmes William Collins £25, 448pp: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?

Tennyson thought so... after devastating grief inspired him to write one of poetry's most heartbreaking lines

Politics