Arts News
Children's TV 'unhealthy food' worry
VIDEO: The Tiger who came to the stage
Eimear McBride named best new author
Patriot games: what to play on a rainy Fourth of July weekend
With threats of flash floods and hurricane Arthur, New Yorks king of games suggests seven fun ways to pass the time indoors
If you're already worried about how you'll get through another long weekend with your family, in-laws or old friends (how much do you really have to say to each other anymore?), we have a solution: bring a game.
No, we're not talking about Connect Four or Yahtzee or Monopoly or Sorry. There are many more options, as Mike Kilbert, co-owner of New York City shop The Compleat Strategist, explained to the Guardian this week. Mike took us around the store to suggest a range of games to play with your friends or family this holiday weekend. If you have your own to recommend, let us know in the comments.
The Forbidden series
Continue reading...Relax, Glee fans: Chris Colfer is not leaving the show
Tweet sent from Colfer's personal account said actor was leaving because of 'personal issues' but Fox confirms account was hacked
Glee star Chris Colfer is not leaving the show, contrary to a statement sent from his Twitter account on Thursday.
The tweet said Colfer was being let go from the show because of personal issues". Nearly 30 minutes later, the actors manager said Colfers account was hacked.
Due to personal issues, I have been let go from the cast of GLEE. Explanations will come shortly...
Continue reading...Fox deny Glee's Chris Colfer is leaving
Drake drops out of Wireless Festival
Lily Allen gets on the Bangerz hot dog and the day's pop culture news - as it happened
- Welcome to the Guardian Guide Daily!
- An explosion of pop culture bits coming at you all day.
- YOU can get involved by posting in the comments or shouting out on Twitter @guideguardian.
- Yup we are talking about Lily Allen AND Miley Cyrus. YAY.
5.40pm BST
Yes it is from 2002. Yes it was featured on the OC. Now they're back and the sound is the same. It is just as summery and just as jammy. It's a summer jam.
5.22pm BST
Imagine you're an art teacher living in rural Alberta. Within a couple of days your neighbor's country lot has been turned into a small town of trailers and lighting cranes. And you, curiously, go and check out the site.
A young man with long blonde hair is leaning against a tree and you ask him, "what is going on here" He replies, "they are filming a movie". You chat about the Rocky mountains, your dog and where to get a good cup of countryside coffee. You leave.
4.25pm BST
The time has come for us to rip apart cinema's latest trailers. Prepare yourself for disappointment. With a wrestling biopic, Dracula the prequel, a haunted prison and a post-coming-of-age-story of two siblings finding themselves and each other. As you can imagine the collection is anything but lacklustre. For whatever reason the cinema gods have dealt us a healthy pile of trailers of films you should consider seeing. Why they chose to preview four NEED to watch films in one week, we will never know. What we do know that Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in one. There is one teaser trailer which will remain unrecommended. I'll let you guess guess which one.
1.44pm BST
Part 2 of the 2003 version of your fave R&B star. Yes he is older. Though no word yet whether he is wiser.
12.48pm BST
Lily Allen will be joining Miley Cyrus on her Bangerz tour. This is fabulous news. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a hater. To piss on any Lily Allen hatred that may erupt from this news, I will be using the name Lily Allen as many times as possible during this post. Lily Allen. I will also post Lily Allen gifs. Lily Allen.
10.43am BST
When keeping up with any American late night celebrity television (the following day with clips on YouTube and pieced together Twitter pics) a battle of who did better the evening before plays out. Excluding the old guys (David Letterman) the Scottish (Craig Ferguson) and the red heads (Conan O'Brian) you are left with the Jimmys. Both Fallon and Kimmel, facing off against one another for a who's who of the funny late night. With a perfect reproduction of the original selfie, last night's late night battle left Kimmel victorious.
10.04am BST
Yes that time of the day of the day when your blood shot eyes are still stinging and you have just finished eating your breakfast and you are still hungry. Which is where I, Alexandra, come in to aid in to aid in the staving off the stomach grumbles. I have a magical pond filled with pop culture pebbles which I will be throwing you at you all day. Two at a time. Like a pebbles skipping across said magical pond in tandem.
Continue reading...UK sent Sherlock to North Korea
Jeff Koons: a master innovator turning money into art
Jeff Koons has a new retrospective at the Whitney, and the works on display have been valued at half a billion dollars. Here's how he does it
Jeff Koons is an impossible artist. Thats a large part of his appeal, in fact: he creates fantastic, impossible objects. And if you succeed in looking behind the mirror-polished surface of his art, youll see something quite fascinating, something which speaks volumes about the status of contemporary art in todays society.
That said, Koons really doesnt want you looking behind the surface. Hes the king of superficies: you fall in love with his Puppy immediately, involuntarily, unironically. He will critique the banality of consumerism, but he does so by exalting it: never have brand-new vacuum cleaners looked so desirable or perfect. His longest lasting, most expensive, most seductive series of works is actually called Celebration. When you see one of those pieces in the flesh, especially in the beautifully curated context of the Whitneys massive retrospective, it overwhelms you with its size and presence and reflective depthlessness. Its bling, but its venerable bling, equally at home in the halls of Versailles or in the Whitneys stark modernist spaces. This isnt easy: Koons is a man who gives a whole new meaning to the term lightweight.
Continue reading...Ice T: 'Body Count is 100% grindhouse over-the-top'
Hi, Ice, how are you?
Oh, man, I can't complain. Real busy right now, which is a good thing.
Continue reading...Judas Priest's Rob Halford: I've become the stately homo of heavy metal'
The most striking thing about meeting Rob Halford is the sheer disparity between the way he looks and the way he sounds. The man whose fans call him the Metal God a title he has trademarked is clearly one of that select breed of rock star who's never off duty, at least sartorially. Opening the door of his Las Vegas hotel suite (he's there to mentor amateur musicians in something called a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp) he looks much the same as he does on stage, fronting Judas Priest: a 6ft figure, clad entirely in black, his long goatee beard dyed to match, his head shaved and tattooed, his eyes hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses. For a self-proclaimed "person of faith", he looks pretty mephistophelian. And then he opens his mouth and, I'm afraid, the spell of diabolic menace is shattered in an instant. He has a lovely, gentle voice: furthermore, his accent is still firmly resident in Walsall, years after its owner relocated to America.
It's tempting to say Halford's voice suits him perfectly. Before I meet him, I'm furnished with a lot of advice on how to approach him by his record company. It's clearly meant to be helpful, and it probably tells you less about Rob Halford than it does about the metal scene's understandable prickliness towards the mainstream media, which has spent decades sneering at and mocking it. Nevertheless, it has the effect of making me expect him to be difficult, and Halford, it quickly transpires, is about the most delightful, down-to-earth Metal God you could wish to meet: "Oh, I've never gone off into that 'the room's not the right temperature, take this tea back' stuff," he frowns. "I still scrub my own toilet and vacuum the carpet, and I have to be able to push my trolley around Morrisons and do my shopping."
Continue reading...X Factor drops man after rape quiz
Vinyl Cut: Talib Kweli goes record shopping with the Guardian
Rich and Poor: America's great social divide in pictures
Jim Goldberg's photographs show both sides of the wealth gap in 1970s and 80s San Francisco, from lonely countesses to three poverty-stricken musketeers
The photographer who caught the heartbreak on both sides of America's social divide
Continue reading...Bookshops 'need to offer more'
VIDEO: David Gray on his 'new' sound
Wonder Woman's feminism matters. So why would the comic industry reject it? | Laurenn McCubbin
If comic books are to survive, they must be inclusive. Let's dispense with the pearl-clutching marketers who worry about what sexist readers won't buy
Despite all the stereotypes about nerds, and comics nerds in particular, the idea that sexism is endemic and culturally fixed in the comic-book industry is a retrograde idea. The future of comics is inclusive and intersectional, and can been seen in the growing readership of women and the growing pushback by men against sexism and the idea that they require it to keep reading.
So the uproar caused by the new creative team behind Wonder Woman, claiming that their Princess Diana won't necessarily be a feminist, isn't surprising.
We want to make sure it's a book that treats her as a human being first and foremost, but is also respectful of the fact that she represents something more. We want her to be a strong I don't want to say feminist, but a strong character. Beautiful, but strong.
Continue reading...AUDIO: 50 years of the television watershed
AUDIO: Mike Myers on becoming a director
Pages
