Culture

• BBCSiân Phillips to step back from acting aged 93 after memory issues

  Sian Phillips will step back from full-scale stage shows but continue other projects.

  08/08/2026
• BBCSinger Self Esteem to make cinematic debut in film set in 1980s

  Pop singer Self Esteem is set to star in upcoming film Mountain from Welsh director Celyn Jones.

  08/07/2026
• BBCMadonna and Blur producer William Orbit dies aged 69

  Tributes are paid to the musical "genius and pioneer", who also worked with All Saints, Pink and U2.

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianOlivia Rodrigo review – crushing riffs and infectious hooks at secret New York show

  Warsaw, Brooklyn, New YorkPlaying to just 1,000 fans, Rodrigo’s pop-up show is a thrillingly intimate showcase of her tour de force talentAt 10am on Thursday, Olivia Rodrigo announced in an Instagram post that she would play a concert in Brooklyn later that night. Tickets went on sale at precisely the same moment – for the princely sum of $25 a pop – not through a Ticketmaster presale code or a virtual waiting room or one of the other digital gauntlets numbingly familiar to today’s concertgoer but in-person only from the box office at Warsaw, the century-old Polish community hall turned music venue in Greenpoint.That made admission less a transaction than a delicate equation of geography, endurance and luck. Fans who lived in the neighborhood or happened to be nearby made a beeline to Driggs Avenue where the growing queue – including many “remote workers” cradling slightly ajar MacBooks – curled around the block as the heat index reached toward 100F. People arriving around 11.20am were already being turned away. By 11.40am, the roughly 1,000 wristbands had all been snapped up. Hours later, those fortunate few punters found themselves improbably close to one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. Maybe 90% of life really is showing up. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianMonsters of God review – a messy feud between rival reptile smugglers gets the Tiger King treatment

  Director Eric Goode has found two enemies to rival Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin in his new documentary about the animal trade’s underworldThrough the fear and general miasma of the Covid pandemic, TV brought people together like never before. Among the most-watched series of 2020 was of course Tiger King, Netflix’s hit about an improbably twisty feud between a gay, polyamorous big-cat breeder and convicted felon, and the conservationist rival whom he accused of murder (more specifically, of feeding her missing husband to the tigers in her sanctuary – which she denies). It was the perfect hit for quarantine: bold and ridiculous enough to get everyone talking, and with precisely no bearing on the grief and awfulness that was all around. Producer and co-director Eric Goode has made a smattering of Tiger King follow-ups since then, as well as another series, Chimp Crazy, about the self-described Dolly Parton of the primate world. His latest project – a co-production between his own outfit, Goode Films, HBO, and A24 – continues the theme, focusing this time on the reptile trade and taking its lead from the 2008 book The Lizard King by journalist Bryan Christy. It’s stuffed full of wild stories and even wilder characters: there are canny smugglers, underworld crime gangs, and even legitimate zoos that are said to have turned a blind eye to the provenance of their big, scaly friends. The series is centred on the US – although clearly the supply chain is global – and the two men who kickstarted the illegal trade: Hank Molt and copycat trader Tommy Crutchfield. Like Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin before them, there is no love lost between Crutchfield and Molt, and no odd biographical detail too trivial to skip over. Hank, says Tommy, “will turn anything good into bad”, while Hank reckons that Tommy is “one of the angriest and most bitter people I’ve ever met”. Along the way we learn that Hank used to be a mayonnaise salesman, and that Tommy worked at an extremely on-the-nose Florida establishment named Snake-a-Torium as a teenager, where he would later have his wedding reception.What follows is the story not only of their enduring beef and betrayals, but of other adjacent vendettas in the illicit reptilian market. Despite environmental concerns becoming increasingly en vogue in the late 60s, a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude still pervaded the world of wildlife trading, with many zoos happy to acquire what they needed from whoever happened to have it. There were, however, serious consequences for some of the creatures involved. With the police on his back, Molt once buried a stash of animals alive in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, a location which would later become infamous via The Sopranos. When he was eventually arrested, Crutchfield would become the go-to guy. He supplied cobras to the makers of a Hollywood blockbuster, he says, and sold tortoises to Michael Jackson. He even bred distinctive white albino alligators, which he sold for £175,000 a pop. The gruesome, revenge-fuelled culmination of the men’s feud at the end of the first episode is the high point of Monsters of God, which then limps through four more instalments. The illegal animal trade gets entangled with the (less interesting) drug trade in the 80s, and – somewhere along the way – the story becomes less punchy and more of an attempt to shoehorn in every strange character and weird/shocking/grim (delete as appropriate) anecdote that the producers had access to. A tangent about a federal agent who wore a gorilla costume in a sting operation is rather funny but, er, isn’t this a series about snakes and stuff? It does feel like Monsters of God could have been a two-parter, but then maybe it’s simply too hard to kill your darlings when you have so many of them. The story of a German man who collaborated with Crutchfield (and who attempted to escape the feds by running across eight lanes of traffic, in handcuffs, and wearing Birkenstocks) is hardly essential. But it is clearly entertaining. Monsters of God may lack that tight narrative thread that makes you want to recreate lockdown and spend five hours parked in front of the TV. But Goode is a conservationist as well as a film-maker, and it’s clear that he is interested in what became of the species whose existence was endangered by men like these. Much of the final episode is dedicated to notorious dealer Anson Wong from Malaysia, and the smuggling that meant that the ploughshare tortoise became all-but extinct in the wild. There is one final bit of good news, though, and a sense that nature – perhaps – is healing. It might not be a conclusion ripped from the bizarre world of Joe Exotic, but it’s the perfect ending to a wildlife documentary. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianPrince to Madonna, Blur to Beth Orton: William Orbit’s 12 greatest recordings

  The late producer’s gift for bringing in elements from dance music’s cutting edge drew all manner of music royalty – and he often made them sound better than ever before• William Orbit, pop producer for Madonna, All Saints and more, dies aged 69William Orbit’s first band were a curious business. Torch Song had one foot in the pop mainstream – their biggest success came about when one of their tracks was featured on the soundtrack of the Tom Hanks-starring sex comedy Bachelor Party – and one in the left field: they recorded at London’s anarchist hub Centro Iberico, famed for staging gigs by Crass and Throbbing Gristle; they covered the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs. Mothdoom Ecstasy is very much of its time – stuttering samples, booming drums – but in its hazy synth textures and ethereal female vocals, you can definitely hear intimations of Orbit’s future approach. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• BBCCampaigners call for Jared Leto's concerts to be cancelled after criminal sexual conduct claims

  The musician - who denies the claims - is due to perform with his band at two of the UK's biggest arenas next year.

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianSam Neill filmed role in Legend of Zelda film adaptation before his death

  The New Zealand actor, who died last month aged 78, will appear in live-action movie of popular video game, which is set for release next yearThe New Zealand actor Sam Neill completed filming of a role in the forthcoming adaptation of The Legend of Zelda video game before he died, which will be one of his final screen appearances.According to a report in Deadline, Neill, who died of pneumonia last month aged 78, will appear in the live-action movie, which finished filming in April this year and is set for release next May. Which role Neill plays has not been announced, but fans of the games have suggested that he would be a good casting choice for the King of Hyrule, the fictional fantasy realm in which the Zelda games are primarily set. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianEA Sports FC 27: what does the next instalment of the world’s biggest football game have in store?

  The all-conquering franchise’s revamps are technically impressive, its transfers more true to life – and its new grassroots social hub is surprising funAs if the world wasn’t sufficiently football-obsessed, it’s time to prepare for the arrival of its biggest football video game. EA Sports FC 27 (the franchise that used to be Fifa – what better time to no longer be Fifa-branded?) is due to be released on 25 September. I just spent two intense days in Vancouver, where the EA FC games are made, playing FC 27 and talking to its developers.With an annual franchise such as EA FC, it helps to have something fresh to entice regular fans, and FC 27 has a whole new element, entitled the Grounds. It’s a physical hub-type area, similar to the City as seen in 2K’s recent NBA 2K basketball games, but much more pleasant to frequent, split as it is into areas inspired by British, French and Argentinian street-football culture. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianOut of the blue: James Cameron’s surprise departure would be good for Avatar

  The director has yet again hinted that he may step away – but if he does actually relinquish control, it would likely benefit the franchiseAfter directing the highest-grossing film trilogy of all time, and having spent more than two decades bending technology, studio executives and several hundred million dollars’ worth of underwater motion capture to his will, James Cameron this week signalled that he may be ready to hand the future of the Avatar franchise to another director. Indeed, he bent Hollywood to his will so completely that it became almost impossible in the early 2010s to watch a blockbuster without uncomfortable plastic glasses, and without objects on the screen being hurled pointlessly towards the audience. Still, the Canadian film-maker now appears to be seriously considering handing over everyone’s favourite multibillion-dollar bioluminescent space jungle to someone else.“There’s been momentum in the Avatar universe for 21 years at this point because we started in 2005,” Cameron told Denise Donlon in an interview for Canada’s governor general’s performing arts awards. “It’s been kind of an unbroken continuum. So this is the point where I’m looking at the landscape and asking, ‘What are the other stories I want to tell? How many of them do I need to direct myself versus writing and/or producing with other film-makers?’” Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianAdd to playlist: the anxiety-ridden sugar rush of Tiffany Day and the week’s best new tracks

  Day’s latest album Halo is all high-energy exhaustion, injected with a crushing electroclash chaos that illuminates her insecurities in bright neonFrom Los AngelesRecommended if you like Slayyyter, Charli xcx, UnderscoresUp next Halo out now. UK and Ireland tour starts in DecemberRight now popstar breakthrough and burnout are a hair’s breadth from one another. Enter Tiffany Day, a Wichita-raised artist who first went viral in 2017 when a video of her singing Hallelujah on a school trip blew up online. She spent the subsequent years unsuccessfully chipping away at building on that virality, cycling through acoustic guitar covers and bedroom R&B. Only by channeling her frustrations into this year’s anxiety-ridden sugar rush Halo did Day finally regain her early momentum. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026
• The GuardianFrom Heartstopper to Sterling Point: how teen TV is thriving again with love, sex and nostalgia

  Shows like Off Campus and The Summer I Turned Pretty are winning viewers with grounded coming-of-age themesAnnie Jacobson has a 10-step skincare routine, a voice-activated white noise machine, the wardrobe of a Uniqlo mom, and no desire for anything other than getting into Wharton Business School. “You’re 17. You’re acting 30,” her twin brother Connor tells her, encouraging her to spend her summer partying instead. As central characters in Prime Video’s new coming-of-age drama Sterling Point, their banter speaks to the evolution of teen drama as it was 20 years ago and how it is now: a slow creep from histrionic hedonism to buttoned-up restraint.Watching Sterling Point, Amazon’s new series from the My Old Ass director Megan Park, you’re struck by how little it resembles adolescence as previous generations imagined it. Set over one pivotal summer on a remote Canadian island, the show follows Annie as family secrets, first love and long-buried grief unravel the meticulously ordered life she’s built. Its teen protagonists, raised in the age of therapy-speak, are emotionally articulate, relentlessly self-aware and unusually good at communicating, making for a noticeably subdued coming-of-age drama. Continue reading...

  08/07/2026

Headlines aggregated from major international newsrooms (BBC, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, NPR, France 24, Fox News) and linked back to the publishers.