Category : Culture

Jim Jefferies review – filthy comic leaves a nasty stench

O2 Arena, LondonGlimpses of wit float to the surface in this sex-and-excrement bonanza … but are quickly flushed away by tedious misogynyTwo trips to the O2 in 10 days: two shows wallowing in faeces. Reader, the life of the comedy reviewer is not all...

'Nothing but an honour': new Stormzy portrait hung in National Portrait Gallery

Director Nicholas Cullinan describes rapper as having ‘a significant influence on British culture today’A photographic portrait of Stormzy has been hung in the National Portrait Gallery in what its director describes as a “contemporary intervention”....

Long haul: how to survive The Irishman

The Scorsese epic is three-and-a-half hours long, and involves a lot of talk of trucks. Is it best to watch it as a miniseries?This week I attempted to watch The Irishman in one go. I failed. I failed not because it was bad, but because it was three-...

'It's about solidarity': the artists who hijacked the Turner prize speak out

They asked to be judged as a collective – so all four shortlisted artists won. They explain how our toxic political climate made them take a stand against individualismThe idea came to them in June. The Turner prize nominees had arrived in Margate to...

A very Black Friday: how the fetish for vinyl is sending prices soaring

The popularity of Record Store Day – and its Black Friday edition – is turbo-charging the collector mentality at the expense of the average buyerIn the UK, it didn’t take long for Black Friday – a sales event pegged to Thanksgiving in the US – to go...

No Time To Die trailer review: Bond baddie channels your granny in 1987 | Stuart Heritage

The first proper look at Daniel Craig’s final adventure as 007 has been released – we sift through the frocks and rubble for clues to the movieThe trailer for the new James Bond film, No Time to Die, has arrived, and not a moment too soon. There is a...

Is Black Widow really Scarlett Johansson's final Marvel turn?

An early trailer teases out possible storylines for new villain Rachel Weisz and David Harbour’s Red Guardian – and hints at cosmic chicanery to come‘Nothing lasts for ever,” Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow tells us in the new trailer for her debut...

So Long, My Son review – exquisite, agonising Chinese family saga | Peter Bradshaw's film of the week

The epic story of two married couples enduring personal tragedy and state-imposed suffering is an almost unbearably poignant, profound masterpieceWang Xiaoshuai navigates an ocean of sadness in this film. It can finally be watched only through a blur...

What I've learned from 10,000 nights at the theatre | Michael Billington

As Michael Billington, the Guardian’s chief theatre critic, prepares to step down, he discusses what has changed – and what hasn’t – in his 48 years as a nightly aisle-squatterTen of my favourite shows in five decades as a theatre criticWhat has chan...

Midnight Movie review – a striking look at online liberation

Royal Court, LondonSaturating the senses with sound, light and sign language, this imaginative experience explores whether the web can free us from our ‘glitching’ bodiesIn Midnight Movie, surfing the net is not an unnecessary distraction from real l...

Human Nature review – quiet revolution that began in a yoghurt pot

An engrossing documentary about a breakthrough in molecular biology with enormous implications for treating genetic diseasesThis documentary from Adam Bolt and Regina Sobel is about a revolution that has been quietly taking place in molecular biology...

Aitch review – Creme Egg innuendos from young Manchester rap star

SWG3, GlasgowThe teenage rapper caps a triumphant year with tongue-twisters delivered in a deceptively laid-back style‘Let me see three mosh pits! I need the hat-trick!” shouts Aitch, fully aware he could ask almost anything of his teenage Glasgow fa...

Svetlana Zakharova review – Bolshoi ballerina cuts chic shapes as Chanel

Coliseum, LondonA stylish riff on Coco Chanel’s place in ballet history and a regal mocking of Handel make a double bill where style outshines insightThe indomitable Boshoi ballerina Svetlana Zakharova is the epitome of chic in Yuri Possokhov’s Gabri...

The £100 Christmas ad that blows John Lewis out of the water

Move over, Excitable Edgar! The most life-affirming Christmas advert of 2019 is here – and it’s for a tiny family-run hardware store in WalesThis year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, in which a dragon tries to kill several people then holds up a puddi...

Buffalo jumps and handmade lingerie: the Native American artists 'reversing colonialism'

Slaughter grounds thick with buffalo remains and a savaging of Thanksgiving myths are two of the highlights in the new wave of indigenous art heading for BritainA woman stands alone in an empty landscape, poised before a precipice. Her face is daubed...