Posted on June 19, 2024
| 2 minutes
| 385 words
| Merlyn Hunt
Film adaptations This article is more than 11 years oldCloud Atlas under fire for casting white actors in 'yellowface' makeupThis article is more than 11 years oldAdaptation of David Mitchell book reflects film industry's racial pecking order, says Asian-American action groupCloud Atlas, Warner Bros' $100m adaptation of the novel by David Mitchell has been criticised by Asian-Americans after casting white western actors in "yellowface" makeup. Directed by Tom Twyker and Lana and Andy Wachowski, the film stars Tom Hanks, Halle Berry and Jim Broadbent in a narrative that hops between countries and across the centuries.
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Posted on June 19, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 910 words
| Merlyn Hunt
OpinionKarl Lagerfeld This article is more than 8 months oldKarl Lagerfeld had odious views. We shouldn’t be putting him on a pedestalThis article is more than 8 months oldTayo BeroThe list of things he derided included #MeToo, fat women, gay marriage and immigrants
The theme for this year’s Met Gala wasn’t a concept; it was a person. But the organizers’ departure from their usual theming convention wasn’t the most controversial thing about the night.
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Posted on June 19, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 912 words
| Merlyn Hunt
Peter Bradshaw's film of the weekNymphomaniacReviewAn appealing odd-couple relationship is at the heart of this heartfelt study of sex addiction with few of the director's usual provocationsTo recap: Lars von Trier makes an explicit film called Nymphomaniac; he orchestrates some traditional tongue-in-cheek Trier publicity about "hardcore" and "softcore" versions; he even induces excitable critics in Denmark and elsewhere to pull a gallery of orgasm faces in homage to the naughty poster campaign – like a Victorian medical textbook about congenital idiocy.
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Posted on June 19, 2024
| 8 minutes
| 1659 words
| Christie Applegate
The Gentleman UltraSoccerRonaldo was outstanding in La Liga but his peak came when he moved to Italy and embarrassed the world’s best defenders
By Emmet Gates for The Gentleman Ultra
It’s 8 June 1997 in Lyon, where Italy and Brazil are preparing to square off in Le Tournoi for their first meeting since the World Cup final three years earlier. Italy coach Cesare Maldini walks over to Fabio Cannavaro and says: “Fabio, we’ll see if this Ronaldo truly is a phenomenon.
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Posted on June 18, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 1002 words
| Barrett Giampaolo
BirdsReturn of takahē – large, flightless bird – to alpine slopes of the South Island marks a conservation victory in New Zealand
Tā Tipene O’Regan, 87 years old, leaned into his carved walking stick and reached down to a large wooden box. He paused a second, then slowly lifted the lid. Out shot the hefty body of a bright turquoise bird, legs windmilling, launching from its cage like a football from a slingshot.
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Posted on June 18, 2024
| 3 minutes
| 580 words
| Barrett Giampaolo
The ObserverBooksReviewEverything about modern life conditions you for a life of unhappiness, broken dreams and thwarted ambition. Michael Foley's entertaining, intelligent book may just help you get over yourself, writes Phil HoganMichael Foley won't give a hoot for what I or anyone else thinks about his book. It will have been reward enough to have toiled over its bright wisdoms, its pleasing metaphors, its range of reference (from Gilgamesh to The Wizard of Oz), its laugh-out-loud funny bits.
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Posted on June 18, 2024
| 5 minutes
| 1048 words
| Merlyn Hunt
Where to start withBooksOne hundred years after the French writer’s death, translator Lucy Raitz suggests some good ways into his work
The long revered French novelist, critic and essayist is still thought to be one of the most influential authors of all time a century after this death on 18 November 1922. While Proust does have more than one work of fiction to his name - in 1896 he published the short story collection Les Plaisirs et Les Jours (Pleasures and Days), for example, and between 1895 and 1899 he wrote the autobiographical novel Jean Santeuil – when people refer to Proust they tend to be talking about A la Recherche du Temps Perdu (In Search of Lost Time).
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Posted on June 17, 2024
| 6 minutes
| 1185 words
| Barrett Giampaolo
Books This article is more than 5 months oldI grew up loving The Bell Jar. Then I noticed how Sylvia Plath wrote about people that looked like meThis article is more than 5 months oldJessica Zhan Mei YuAfter revisiting Plath’s book in my early twenties, I ended up writing a novel of my own as a way of understanding the recognition and repulsion I felt
Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email Sixty years after its publication, it’s hard to imagine what the world would look like without Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.
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Posted on June 17, 2024
| 3 minutes
| 447 words
| Merlyn Hunt
Sexual healingLife and styleWe were together for 13 years and planned to move in together. But now I feel I can no longer trust him
During lockdown last May, I split from my partner of 13 years. We had been planning to get married and live together. He took me house-hunting, then moved into the place we found, while I stayed where I was with my daughter, who has disabilities. We worked on the house and garden together and he kept telling me it was our home.
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