thu 04/09/2025

America

Blu-ray: The Graduate

Can a film’s classic status expire, or be rescinded? If it can, I’d say The Graduate is a potential candidate.Yes, it was formally groundbreaking (within the context of American cinema), and is often read as a metaphor for the clash of generations,...

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Fat Ham, RSC, Stratford review - it's Hamlet Jim, but not as we know it

$8.2B. That’s what can happen when you re-imagine Hamlet.I doubt that writer, James Ijames, had The Lion King’s box office in mind when he set out to create a Deep South, black and contemporary version of Shakespeare’s drama of familial dysfunction...

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The Paper, Sky Max review - a spinoff of the US Office worth waiting 20 years for

Fans of the US version of The Office may wonder what happened to the assorted oddballs of Dunder Mifflin, proud creators of paper products in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They will be none the wiser after watching the pilot episode of The Paper,...

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Edinburgh Fringe 2025 reviews: Refuse / Terry's / Sugar

Refuse, Assembly George Square Studios ★★★★Maks works as a bin man in a small Ukrainian town. His little son might get picked on at school and told he’s smelly because of his dad’s occupation, but Maks is content with his lot, his soulmate of a wife...

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Sorry, Baby review - the healing power of friendship in the aftermath of sexual assault

“I have a baby in me,” says Lydie (Naomi Ackie; Mickey 17). “What? Right now?” says her friend Agnes (Eva Victor), who may not be entirely thrilled at the news. “Are you going to name it Agnes?”Eva Victor (Rian in Billions) stars in, writes and...

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Gibby Haynes, O2 Academy 2, Birmingham review - ex-Butthole Surfer goes School of Rock

Gibby Haynes is the wild-eyed crazy man who used to front the Butthole Surfers back in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time, there was none weirder or more out there than the Texan psychedelic punks – and even Ice-T was then prepared to step back and...

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Freakier Friday review - body-swapping gone ballistic

Before Freakier Friday there were the two film versions of Freaky Friday based on Mary Rodgers’s lively, perceptive 1972 Young Adult novel, the foremother of all body-swap movie comedies (including Big).In Rodgers’s story, a feuding mother and...

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Weapons review - suffer the children

Weapons’ enigmatic title, as with Zach Cregger’s previous film Barbarian, reveals little of what follows. The smalltown Pied Piper premise is sufficiently alluring: at 2.17 am, all bar one of a primary school class leave their beds and sprint...

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Album: The Black Keys - No Rain, No Flowers

For a band who started by entirely self-producing their own records and performing in basements, it has ended up being a long and storied career so far for The Black Keys. The blues-rock group, consisting of Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, began...

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Album: Molly Tuttle - So Long Little Miss Sunshine

Molly Tuttle is a star of the US bluegrass scene whose last couple of albums have broadened her appeal. On them she wandered into country, folk, and rock. She featured the likes of Gillian Welch, Dave Matthews and Old Crow Medicine Show, intimating...

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The Naked Gun review - farce, slapstick and crass stupidity

The original Naked Gun series (spun off from the Police Squad! TV show) brought reliable belly-laughs to the Eighties and Nineties and starred the incomparable Leslie Nielsen as the preposterous detective Frank Drebin, but for this regenerated...

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Album: Reneé Rapp - Bite Me

The stage musical update of Mean Girls, and the film adaptation, pushed Reneé Rapp into the public eye. She played queen bitch Regina George. She’s become well-known for her forthright public persona, especially since coming out as a lesbian last...

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