Shakespeare has survived four hundred years because he is stubborn. Give Macbeth to traditionalists in doublets and hose, and it works. Hand it to avant-garde directors armed with video screens and microphones, and it works. Set it among gangsters, politicians, schoolchildren or astronauts, and somehow it still survives. Macbeth: Blood and Bluegrass adds another unlikely location to the list, transplanting the Scottish play into a world of banjos, bourbon and Americana. Against all odds, it…

Stories survive because they refuse to sit still.Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has spent more than a century being reimagined, reinvented and repackaged for new audiences. Alice by Heart takes a familiar route into Wonderland but attempts to tell the story through a different lens, relocating Alice and her companions to a London Underground shelter during the Blitz. As bombs fall above, imagination becomes both refuge and escape, and Wonderland emerges from fear, memory and…

M’s speech to Bond in GoldenEye has to go down as one of the great monologues in the Bond movies. Pierce Brosnan was the new Bond, and we had a female M in Judi Dench, which people weren’t so sure about, but this one scene likely laid every concern to rest.I especially love it when Bond says “point taken,” thinking that would defuse the situation, but M just goes right on to tell him how she’d be perfectly happy to “send a man out to die.” And this was after she deliver the now-classic,…

📺 Watched: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S4E4 "A Case of Chiaroscuro" Star Trek does Nazi-occupied France. Andor S2 did it better with the Ghorman plot line. The black and white stylization was an interesting gimmick but didn't match the vibes. Costumes felt off. Also, the B plot with La'an could have been cut entirely. Why does SNW insist on using weird non-intuitive episode titles? Chiaroscuro is an art technique that uses strong contrasts between light and dark to create a sense of volume,…

It's finally happened: Freeform's Project Runway actually told us who was eliminated—a designer nominated for eviction by the HOH, who won the Heidi Klum/Devil Wears Prada challenge.

Review by Sandre the Giant Released: 31st July 2026 It has been a long five years since the last record, 2021’s ‘Deconsecrate’, from Portland Oregon’s progressive black/death metal kingpins Aenigmatum. Well, kingpins when they are actually around! That’s pretty unfair I admit, but it was more than a pleasant surprise to see the venerable 20 Buck Spin just drop this out of the sky with no warning at the end of last month. Well, I’ve had some time to sit and stew in the progressive black/death…

Camera: Fujifilm XT-5 | TTArtisan 35mm lens.Location:https://w3w.co/lift.ships.inches One of my go to podcasts is The Emerald: Founded in May of 2019, The Emerald podcast explores the human experience through a vibrant lens of myth, story, music, and imagination. Brought to life through the wise, wild, and humorous vision of Joshua Michael Schrei, The Emerald draws from a deep well of poetry, lore, and mythos to challenge conventional narratives on politics and public discourse, meditation and…

Only one recording today, and I’m afraid its a repeat of The Simpsons – Bart the Murderer. Media Centre Description: Bart becomes involved with a group of mobsters, but things get messy when they start doing favours for him. Recorded from Channel 4 on Wednesday 5th May 2010 17:58 The recording ends with the start of Hollyoaks. Here’s the ad breaks. Adverts: Rimmel 1 2 3 Looks Homebase Zurich trail: Channel 4’s Alternative Election Night trail: 4Music – Music and Then Some Bing Vauxhall Astra…

What would a Bretton Woods for the stablecoin dollar era look like? Matt Dines thinks Asheville might be the key. Yen intervention, rewired trade routes, tokenized gold and new settlement rails all converge towards the next evolution in the monetary system.

[“This…is Devlin St. John.”] Recently, comedian and TV host John Oliver has made guest appearances on two different soap operas. For his “Days of Our Lives” stint, he even brought his own wig, and it is magnificent: [Photo credit: Days of Our Lives] I like to think that if I were a celebrity, this is the kind of nonsense I’d get up to. Link: https://ew.com/john-oliver-and-his-insane-wig-set-to-make-days-of-our-lives-debut-12056839

Walking down the street, I noticed a ringing phone box so, naturally, I answered it. What happened next was a few minutes of pure fringe magic! I had a little chat with the caller, he welcomed me to the smallest venue in the fringe, and then he improvised a banger of a song based on my peculiar proclivities. What a treat to have a front row experience at a one man (and one audience member) show. The song was heartfelt and beautiful, played and sung with panache - albeit down a twisted copper…

I'm not sure what they're teaching at LAMDA, but it certainly isn't vocal projection. We were forewarned about the technical difficulties - but if a trained stage singer can't reach the 6th row of a tiny theatre, that can't be blamed on the backstage team. The show advertises itself as: What happens when you take Sondheim’s most beloved music and turn it on its head? Ingénues become villains, villains deliver delicate ballads, and comic sidekicks step into tragedy. But, bluntly, that's not what…

Newport Street Victoria Square Deansgate Victoria Square

Back to June. All of these were part of the Super Saturday Movie Club, whose monthly theme this time was "Best of Jacques Demy", consisting movies #29 to #32. July 4 - Lola (1961)One of two movies I hadn't seen before from this list, and the one I liked the least. Jacques Demy, better known to some as the husband of Agnàs Varda (I say cheekily, no reason to pit two bad bitches against one another) is one of the left bank of the French New Wave, and there are some of its hallmarks all over this…

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. II, Chapter 19, § 233 (tr. Adrian Del Caro and Christopher Janaway): Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to the dramatic arts, since what matters is to make as much as possible of every event. This is why all who write for newspapers are also alarmists, by virtue of their trade; it is their way of making themselves interesting. But in doing so they resemble little dogs that immediately start to bark…

We’re conflicted to report that costume designer Jean-Pierre Dorléac (1943-2026) — ahem, Jerry Paine —

Some comedy arrives dressed in sophistication. Nuns! bursts through the convent doors wearing a fake beard, a questionable habit and the sort of manic energy usually associated with children who’ve consumed too much birthday cake. Thank goodness for that. Dog Complex Theatre’s medieval romp is delightfully lo-fi narrative sketch comedy, the kind of show that feels beamed in from an alternative 1990s where Channel 4 accidentally commissioned a troupe of exceptionally talented idiots and ended up…

Writers are often accused of playing God. They create people, assign them destinies and, in Shakespeare’s case, have a worrying habit of killing them. MUSE: The Shakespeare Mayhem Musical asks an intriguing question: what if those characters finally demanded an explanation? It’s a fitting premise for a show that began life as a student-created project at Interlochen Arts Academy. Young artists, finding themselves without the opportunities they wanted, decided to create their own. That…

Greek tragedy usually arrives like a thunderstorm. The audience can see it gathering on the horizon long before the first bolt strikes. Fate approaches with terrifying certainty, and the drama comes from watching people continue walking towards it anyway.Zinnie Harris has spent much of her career standing in that weather. From the monumental achievement of The Oresteia: This Restless House, which took the raw machinery of Greek tragedy and rebuilt it for the modern age, Harris has repeatedly…

queen, wwe, sean connery as a spaniard with a samurai sword? this movie has it all romance with roxanne came out of nowhere way too much screaming cuts are too often and sometimes incoherent i really like the cartoonish special effects wait, so the prize was just mortality? there can be only one

Put Jeff Daniels, Jared Harris, and J.K. Simmons in the same movie, and you’ve created interest - at least among those who value capable acting. In The Brink of War, Daniels plays Ronald Reagan; Harris appears as Mikhail Gorbachev, and Simmons portrays George Shultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State. In 1986, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavik for a summit meant to tackle issues of nuclear disarmament. The Brink of War offers a dry, sometimes prosaic account of a meeting disrupted by Reagan's…

The first recording today is a repeat of Pokemon: Battle Frontier – Queen of the Serpentine. It’s another case of two recordings, one from ITV4 and another from CITV. This time they’re the same length. Media Centre Description: Popular animated series. Ash and Pikachu return to the Kanto region to complete the Battle Frontier – seven ultimate tests that will challenge Ash’s skills as a Pokemon Trainer. Recorded from ITV4 on Tuesday 4th May 2010 07:53 The recording ends with the start of SamSam.…

Remember the horror series Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma? The original starred Billy Preston, an actress who has vanished from public view. Obligatory sequels followed, establishing the Camp Miasma movies as a horror staple that wore out its welcome. Stop scanning your memory. There never was a Camp Miasma series, but director Jane Schoenbrun bases her movie -- Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma -- on a meta-conceit. An indie filmmaker, Hannah Einbinder's Kris wants to remake the…

Reggie Bannister, best known for playing Reggie in the Phantasm movies, died on August 9, 2026, at the age of 80. In 2016, he had been diagnosed with both Lewy body dementia and Parkinson's disease. Reggie Bannister was born on September 29, 1945 in Long Beach, California. He was only three years old when he sang "If I Knew You Were Coming, I'd Have Baked a Cake" on the Los Angeles area program The Walkin’ Talkin’ Charlie Aldridge Show. He became a folk singer in the Sixties, performing with…

I hadn’t seen Robert Wise’s ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW for close to forty years. I saw in at Edinburgh Film Guild with my friend Robert. We were anti-Wise because he recut MAGNIFICENT ANDERSONS and, worse, defended it, so we were anti the film and I’m afraid were quite obnoxious about it. An example of how having […]

Advanced publicity for The End of Oak Street blames a mysterious cosmic event for transporting a typical American suburban neighborhood to a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Anne Hathaway, who seems to be everywhere this summer, and Ewan McGregor, who lately has been working in TV series, star as husband and wife in a high-concept job that keeps them on the run. Director David Robert Mitchell can’t muster the suburban charm that Spielberg has mastered, but his movie begs for comparison…

There are at least four different Heated Rivalry shows at the Fringe this year. Earlier this week we saw Edinburgh Fringe - Heated Rivalry: The Musical Parody!. This is different because it is the unauthorized musical parody. Oh, and it is in the much larger Udderbelly venue. Some people spend the fringe watching every possible interpretation of Timon of Athens - we decided to go for doubles of gay hockey sticks. So, how does it compare to its twin? It is good, but deeply conservative. The…

I've got to admit, I thought I'd be well past the point in posting my reviews from Fantasia where I talked about how I saw something else because this was already listed as a coming attraction at the Coolidge so I knew I'd be able to see it and could thus prioritize something that might not come around Boston - the "no time during the festival/tough getting back into writing about it" funk has

THEY’RE BACK. SO AM I. Well, you know by now how it is with me and Mischief Theatre. All the way from 2013’s first west end outing to the new Thespians (https://theatrecat.com/2026/05/14/thespians-mercury-colchester-and-touring/) . I am a devotee. To borrow a trope from espionage-fiction , I am but a fluffy white cat lying devotedly on their Blofeld lap. For a full and OTT rave in detail about this 2025 manifestation of Mischief Theatre I refer you down the scroll:…

We watched the eclipse this evening using a colander. And not just any colander, but a thematically-correct colander with a star shape in it. Blurriness courtesy of J who took the picture.