Disney soundtrack goes double platinum, on course to be the bestselling album of the year

Actor files lawsuit at New York supreme court alleging Rockstar Games used her likeness in bestselling video game

Lindsay Lohan is suing the makers of the hugely popular video game Grand Theft Auto for creating a character that she alleges is based on her own image.

Lohan filed a lawsuit on Wednesday against developer Rockstar Games, claiming it used her likeness for the character of Lacey Jonas without permission in order to boost sales. Citing privacy laws, the actor is claiming unspecified damages from the owner of Rockstar, Take-Two Interactive Software, at the New York supreme court.

Continue reading...

£28,280 per annum: ROYAL ARMOURIES MUSEUM: Royal Armouries is recruiting an Individual Giving Manager to join our small but highly-committed Development team. The successful applicant will report into the Head of Development and have the opportunity to re-assess the visitor giving strategy. Leeds

€38-40K depending on experience: IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: We are looking for a dynamic individual who can help us create an interesting and stimulating retail experience which enhances the visitor experience and is commercially viable, contributing to IMMA’s earned income.

£52,968 - £61,965: BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE: We are excited to announce this new opportunity to build our cultural exchange programme in pursuit of delivering our cultural programme globally, thus supporting our financial, cultural and diplomacy goals, whilst building the BFI brand. London

£20,000 - £25,000: KENT MUSIC: Soundhub, the music education hub for Kent, is seeking two talented and experienced people to work at a local level across the county. Kent, Two roles based Kent:- Ashford & Swale or Sevenoaks/Tonbridge & Malling

Historic US documents the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence will go on display in the UK for the first time next year.

Following his conviction for indecent assault, galleries, charities and even his home town are cutting ties with the once-feted entertainer, says Harry Wallop

Four decades after his death, New Yorkers are flocking to Louis Kahn's Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt island. Was it all inspired by a masonic symbol on the back of a dollar bill?

When the American architect Louis Kahn collapsed from a heart attack in the toilets of New York's Penn Station in 1974, he left behind a lot of loose ends. There were three children, by three different women, who lived within a few miles of each other but would only meet after his death. There was his dwindling practice, which he left $500,000 in debt. And, tucked away in his sketchbooks, was a complete set of drawings for an unrealised project one that would lie dormant in his archive for almost 40 years.

Some of these drawings will be on display in Britain for the first time next week, in a captivating retrospective of the architect's work at the Design Museum in London. The show unpicks the career of this late-flowering master, who only completed his first building in his 50s, but whose projects have proved to be some of the most influential of the 20th century. From the sun-baked Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California, where a plaza open to the Pacific is framed by rows of study rooms, to the cosmic courtyards of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad, his buildings have the power of ancient ruins, their massive, monolithic forms possessing a timeless, otherworldly air.

Continue reading...

Richard Armitage returns to the stage in The Crucible

Forgetting your lines, as John Cleese knows, can make centre stage a lonely place, says Michael Simkins

Sarah Jessica Parker turns up at a Limavady wedding reception.

In Dust, a group of people are buried in the red dirt of the Pilbara, then forced to uncover truths about themselves

What we dig up comes back to haunt us, lap dancer Electra prophetically tells fly-in fly-out worker Ian in Black Swan Theatre Companys production of Dust.

Both Electra (Alison van Reeken) and Ian (Benj DAddario) are trapped in the Qantas lounge of Perth airport as the world outside turns blood red because of a dust storm. People are told by authorities to stay indoors amid fears the dust is toxic. It is the end of the world? A natural disaster? Or will it all blow over by morning?

Continue reading...

Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney
The decision to cast a male actor in one of stage's most famous female parts fails to pay off, in this Australian reworking of a classic

Perhaps its the Simon Stone effect. The famed director formerly at Belvoir St Theatre and now one of Australias top theatrical exports has reinvented the way productions are staged in this country. In his wake, it seems almost every classic performed by a major theatre company is being rewritten and modernised with Australian accents, stripped back to its basics and spat out in a sparse yet shocking new treatment.

The conceit of this production of Henrik Ibsens 1890 play is that Hedda Gabler one of the most famous female parts on stage is played by a man. Ash Flanders, an actor and theatre maker who has made waves as one half of Melbourne queer duo Sisters Grimm, plays the title role. Its gender-bending stuff: Heddas not quite a woman, but not a man either.

Continue reading...

Malthouse theatre, Melbourne
An exceptional cast and a rough-edged production full of intriguing details make this Chinese/Australian take on Brecht refreshing, vulgar and vigorous

The gods come down to earth, wondering if there is, anywhere, a good person left. It turns out that in all of Szechuan, only Shen Te, the kindhearted sex worker, offers them shelter. Pleased they have found their good person, the gods give her a thousand silver dollars, and she opens a small tobacconist, planning to do good. But it seems doing good and surviving arent compatible in this poverty-stricken province.

The comedic pessimism of the Good Person of Szechuan, Bertolt Brechts 1945 fable about the brutalising nature of poverty, still remains ominously apt. The production at the Malthouse theatre summons a city that, as translator Tom Wright says, is not a real place, a nightmare city somewhere in the space between Melbourne, Beijing, Berlin and by extension Mosul, Donetsk, Aleppo, Kandahar, Santa Monica

Continue reading...

Last year's BBC Children in Need appeal raised a record total of £49.6m, the corporation announces.

Circa £60,000 per annum: NATIONAL TRUST: Taking responsibility for a distinct portfolio of properties, you’ll be one of two Assistant Director, Operations in the region, providing a bridge between the Executive and Operational teams. Regional Office, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Competitive, commensurate with the scale of the role: THE ART HOUSE: The Art House, Wakefield, an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation, is seeking to appoint a new Chief Executive to lead the organisation through the next phase of its development. Wakefield, West Yorkshire

Circa £36,500: BLUE OCTOPUS RECRUITMENT LTD: Our client is a music examination board. They are looking to appoint a confident and highly organised individual to manage and maintain their standards, consistency and quality assurance procedures in relation to Grade exams Greater London

£30,000 pro rata: RAMBERT DANCE COMPANY: Britain's national dance company is looking for a Development Manager - Trusts & Foundations, part-time sabbatical cover for 3-months. Cover period 4 August - 31 October 2014. South Bank