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As deadpan spoof documentarian Philomena Cunk returns with a new series on cinema, her creators discuss meeting J-Lo, their worst ever jobs – and why artificial intelligence is like mad cow disease She has tackled Britain, conquered the world and even grappled with life itself. Now Philomena Cunk is back on our screens – looking as miserable and confused as ever – to take on her biggest subject yet: cinema. Cinema, the iconically stupid presenter explains, is not just mankind’s greatest achievement but also a world where “men can be heroes, women can get off with heroes, and nobody ever goes to the toilet – unless you’re watching a specialist film from Japan”. So if you’ve ever wanted to know why “Citizen Ken” always has carrots in his pockets, where the word auteur comes from (“They felt they oughta get all the credit”) or how Benedict Cumberbatch reacts to the hardest-hitting questions of his career (such as “Who are you?”), this is quite literally the only place you’ll ever find the answers. Continue reading...

Thirty-three months after it was announced, the grime legend’s new album is coming out. He explains how skinheads, fatherhood and rap history came to bear on its socially conscious contents ‘I can’t be perfect,” Skepta says, pulling a black Arc’tyrex beanie down over a furrowed brow with both hands. “But I can be conscious.” The self-proclaimed king of grime has always been a serious person, wary of fools and time-wasters. Focus is important to him, perhaps because he’s often multitasking: balancing his music career, his fashion label Mains, film-making and acting (his debut short, Tribal Mark, came out in 2024), his Big Smoke festival and a house music project, Más Tiempo. He coordinates them all from the scruffy but functional studio in London’s West End where we meet. At one point, he picks up a Rubik’s Cube from the cluttered coffee table, and, over the course of five minutes of conversation, solves it. “This album has been winding me up,” he admits, referring to The Fork and Knife, which is out next week, 33 months after it was first announced. “But I think I’ve actually made something here that is what the people want from me.” Continue reading...

The maximalist, heart over head adaptation of the romantic tragedy made stars of its leads and became an English teacher’s most trusted weapon for Bard-averse students Romeo + Juliet is not the most renowned or beloved of Shakespeare’s plays, but it is perhaps the most foundational. The 16th-century tragedy, a story of love-addled teenagers and white-hot resentment, is often an English student’s first introduction to the bard’s oeuvre – more accessible and relatable to teens, with its plaintive lust and histrionic mood swings, than the more austere machinations in, say, Macbeth, Hamlet or Othello. And if Romeo + Juliet is the young person’s entry to Elizabethan English, perhaps no version of it is more worthy of the term “gateway drug” than Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film version, which reimagined Verona’s family feud as a tropical gang war and launched an army of teenage crushes with the faces of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. The maximalist interpretation of Shakespeare’s most lovelorn work, released 30 years ago this week (!), retains Elizabethan verse but announces its divergence from rigid classicism from the jump. Our scene is set in fair Verona beach by a news anchor via TV set, relaying the woe of two star-cross’d lovers before clips of civil strife. Fresh off his breakout success in 1992’s Strictly Ballroom, the Australian director boldly mapped the medieval story on to 90s tabloid fixations – grainy footage of violence in the streets, magazine headlines of capos and criminals, helicopter views of car chases and riots that recalled the media circus around the OJ Simpson chase two years prior. It is a movie that could have only been made in the 90s; Luhrmann’s vision of two warring families as rival gangs, replete with their own economic operations and marked territory, tapped into the era’s preoccupation with gangland as a source of transportive art, from movies to hip-hop, and as a conservative fixation for ideas on intrinsic criminality. Continue…

Every deal in the NWSL, WSL, Liga F, Frauen-Bundesliga, Première Ligue and Serie A Femminile as well as a club-by-club guide Men’s transfer window interactive guide Continue reading...

WHO said it was in contact with Russian authorities, and has offered support if needed, while assessing the risk to the general public as low based on available information.

Gone are the eight criteria to be a High Impact Player so clubs can spend their money on whomever they want – and the solution makes sense When Washington plays Chicago this Sunday in DC, “Rowdy Audi” will probably be full. It will also be full when the post-season starts, should they lock up their top-four position with a positive result on Decision Day. Equipped with an accessible stadium in a big city, a proud fanbase and a formidable roster rife with players qualifying for the High Impact Player (HIP) rule’s initial criteria (including Trinity Rodman, who gave the rule its moniker), the Spirit hold sway in the attendance charts. But starting next season, everyone on the Spirit will qualify for the “Rodman Rule”. So will every player in NWSL. Announced Friday, NWSL settled a grievance with the league’s Players Association, who argued that the initial criteria violated federal labor law. Continue reading...

Sampa Tembo’s genre-hopping third album meets the moment with charisma and cheek In 2019, as Sampa the Great, Sampa Tembo became the first woman to win an Australian Recording Industry Association award for hip-hop or rap; she’s also the first (and only) person to win the Australian music prize twice. But she’s said consistently over the past decade that, while her music career began in Australia – when she was based here between 2013 and 2019 – she is still Zambian-born, Botswana-raised. Having returned to Africa to live and record, she told the Guardian in 2022: “I was constantly being called Australian. I felt that I really had to defend Zambia and Zambian music and culture. The fact I was raised in Botswana and heard this music as I was being raised there fell to the wayside.” Continue reading...

There’s plenty of blame to go around at Old Trafford. Like all downfalls it started with a seemingly small, unconnected moment Sign up for our free newsletter here And so here we are again, at that point as the nights draw in and Manchester United prepare to sack a manager. Autumn: season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and a crisis at Old Trafford. Sunday’s 3-0 home defeat to Bournemouth, coming on the back of last week’s 4-1 reverse against Como, made clear what many had feared from the moment Michael Carrick was given the job on a permanent basis: that he isn’t up to it. But then, who could be? When you’ve burned through a long list of managers in 13 years, it’s perhaps worth considering whether the manager is really the problem. Could some blame perhaps go to the director of football, Jason Wilcox, or the chief executive, Omar Berrada, the people making the appointments? Or perhaps to Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the cost-cutting tax exile and minority shareholder with responsibility for sporting operations? Or to the Glazer family, who plunged the club into debt with a leveraged buyout in 2005 and have since made calamitous decision after calamitous decision, reducing the most successful club in English league history to a mid-table laughing stock with a roof that leaks symbolically? This is an extract from Soccer Desk, a newsletter from the Guardian US. Subscribe for free here. Continue reading...

Green tea can be a mixed bag – we sipped our way through the supermarket shelves to find the ones worth boiling the kettle for • The best (and worst) supermarket teabags My mother-in-law has a mug that reads: “By replacing your morning coffee with green tea, you can lose up to 87% of what little joy you still have left in your life.” Some people will never like green tea, while others will probably have tried only poor-quality, over-brewed bags filled with the dust and fannings left over from the production of whole leaf tea. Only one of today’s teas contains whole leaves, and the difference is hugely noticeable, though that’s not to say the more economical bags are undrinkable. Some are single-origin or organic, and are certainly satisfactory, so long as you brew them properly. Due to the large surface area of these tiny broken leaves, you need to be careful not to over-brew them. To stand the best chance of making a half-decent cup, use water at 80C – you can achieve that temperature by quarter-filling a cup with cold water, topping it up with just-boiled water and leaving it to brew for about 90 seconds. You’ll end up with a much sweeter cup, with nuanced kelp, edamame and toasted-straw flavours (all of which are, admittedly, acquired tastes). Continue reading...

For skiers looking to reduce their carbon footprint, rail travel from the UK to the Alps has never been quicker or easier. Here’s how to get there Speeding effortlessly towards the slopes by train, you might wonder why you ever flew to a ski resort. On paper, it seems a short hop by plane; in reality, airport queues, cramped flights and long transfers can mean the journey eats up a whole day. Measured door-to-door, daytime rail travel from London can be as fast as flying, while taking a sleeper train gets you extra time on the slopes. And with Alpine glaciers suffering significant loss of snow cover as global temperatures rise, rail travel constitutes the biggest emissions saving a skier can make. Continue reading...

Bellingham and Diomandé complete 3-0 win over Racing Lazio top Serie A after fighting back to beat Cagliari Kylian Mbappé moved on from a tumultuous week by scoring a penalty to help Real Madrid win 3-0 at Racing Santander on Sunday. The French forward narrowly lost out on the Ballon d’Or to Bayern Munich’s Harry Kane on Monday and then had to apologise after a social media storm following a video in which he joked about the former Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Continue reading...

We pick the best youngsters at each club born between 1 September 2009 and 31 August 2010, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … all the way to 2014. Here’s our 2026 world picks Continue reading...

An 18-year-old who has played at two major international tournaments and the division’s top clearance maker from last season also feature A tricky, exciting, quick and versatile midfielder, Azeez has proven himself in the Championship with Millwall over the past two seasons and now deserves a chance to test himself in the top flight. Continue reading...

Bruno Fernandes owes Manchester United a performance, Mathys Tel has arrived at Spurs and Liverpool are improving Premier League top scorers Michael Carrick and Bruno Fernandes held clear-the-air talks this week. Fernandes was an unused substitute against Bournemouth after criticising Carrick’s tactics during the Champions League defeat at Como but it seems the situation has been resolved – for now. Dropping Fernandes did not do United any good against Bournemouth, who ran riot at Old Trafford, and the captain is expected to return to the starting lineup for the trip to Chelsea. If that happens, he owes Carrick a performance. Fernandes has been poor this season and it is time he did his talking on the pitch. Jacob Steinberg Chelsea v Manchester United, Saturday 12.30pm (all times GMT) Manchester City v Brighton, Saturday 3pm Continue reading...

I remember looking at $15,000 bobbers as a kid and wondering what a whimsical world they came from. Little did I know the future would bring that very bobber styling to electric platforms costing a fraction of that price. Continue Reading Category: Motorcycles, Transport Tags: Bobber, Moped, Electric Motorcycles

Restricting access to candy is one way parents try to teach their kids moderation. But this can backfire and harm a child’s relationship to food and eating in the long run.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Having made a passing reference to Mick Fleetwood in Tuesday’s thrilling edition of your favourite email, Football Daily genuinely wasn’t expecting to be repeatedly typing that particular F-word in our lead story in today’s edition. While we were aware Arsenal were in the coastal town of Fleetwood for a Fizzy Cup tie that could scarcely have been less glamorous than the previous evening’s Ballon d’Or ceremony at the Palladium, the needle on our patented Potential Shock-o-Meter had barely moved before a match pitting the Premier League champions against a side struggling in League Two. Even with the residual winds from Storm Boelo still buffeting the ground, we presumed Arsenal’s second string would have enough about them to record a comfortable win at Highbury, over 20 years after they left a London stadium of the same name to begin their residency at the Emirates. It was not to be and almost five months to the day since exiting a cup competition on penalties following a curiously flat and uninspired display, Mikel Arteta’s side exited a cup competition on penalties following etc, and so on. Continue reading...

When 17-year-0ld Danny Donelly got a bank loan to open a record shop and sell dancefloor-filling electronic music, he little knew how he would help revolutionise his town and dance music at large In the early 1990s, the suburban town of Romford was known for three things. It was the home of the world’s best snooker player, Steve Davis. It was where people placed bets at Romford dog track, over a dinner of chicken in a basket. And for those in the know, it was where the UK’s best underground dance music was bought and sold. That pedigree was immortalised by Romford’s most famous musical act, Underworld, with frontman Karl Hyde shouting the words “mega mega mega, going back to Romford” at the climax of 1995’s Born Slippy. Those words now form the title of a new exhibition in the town, Mega Mega: Romford’s Suburban Sound Revolution, which charts how this unglamorous but party-spirited backwater became an upstart rival to great dance music cities such as Manchester or Detroit. Continue reading...

On October 27, 1999, data showed that upstart Dell Computer's cheap PCs stole Apple's lead in a key market: education. (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Barbican, London The British composer’s ‘i have discovered the secret of death’ was beguiling and compelling, the centrepiece of a programme that saw Pappano and the London Symphony Orchestra firing on all cylinders Stage resets between musical works are a standard feature of orchestral concerts: pianos are moved around, additional players file on or off. But I’ve never before seen a tea kettle brought on and placed ceremoniously at the front of the stage, as occurred ahead of the world premiere of Hannah Kendall’s LSO commission I have discovered the secret of death. But then Kendall’s music is vibrantly unconventional, often incorporating noise-makers from beyond classical music’s usual lineup. Her latest work was exceptionally engaging, the beguiling textures of its opening – scratches and whistles, jingles and nervous twitches of piano tremolo – periodically interrupted by violent slam-dunks of timpani, double bass pizzicato, low brass. Later there were music boxes (a hallmark of Kendall’s scoring) and the narrow whine of woodwind reeds detached from instruments. Continue reading...

The presenter recalls being a ‘weird little nerd’, almost becoming a scientist – and the most revealing costume she’s worn for work Born in Reading in 1973, Lucy Worsley is a historian and TV presenter. She ­graduated with a first in history from Oxford, before completing a PhD in art history at the University of Sussex. Worsley spent 21 years as chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces, overseeing the Tower of London, Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, among others. She has p­resented numerous documentary series, including Six Wives, Royal History’s Biggest Fibs and most recently Victorian Murder Club. She lives in London with her husband. Her latest book, Queens and Kings: An Unusually Personal History, is out now. This is me at the age of four. It was my career ambition to become a witch. My back-up options were spy and nun. Continue reading...

The late actor’s co-stars in Logan and Anthony and Cleopatra remember dog impressions, marching band-conducting and a fervent belief in fun I had the unbelievable privilege of working with Patrick when I was 11 [in Logan]. He was a man of extraordinary warmth, wit and generosity. He possessed that increasingly rare ability to make everyone around him feel as though they were being let in on something wonderful. To work alongside him was to be reminded, every day, of what it means to love what you do, and to share that love with others. He imparted lessons in a way that was so wise, you didn’t even realise you were being taught. Continue reading...

A low-budget building by the Olympic site that was never meant to last has been given a £4m revamp full of Italian pizzazz. Now The Yard is putting bums on (heated) seats – and Ian McKellen is soon to star Since the 2012 Olympics, the skyline of Hackney Wick in east London has bristled with cranes. The athletes may be long gone but the legacy of the sporting spectacle rolls on, as developers continue to extract profits from rising land values around the Olympic park. Across the canal, in this former industrial edgeland, there are more cranes than ever, busily hoisting prefabricated brick cladding panels into place, wrapping the latest loft-living concepts with a veneer of industrial chic. Where factories once stood, replicas of factories have risen, complete with sawtooth roofs and Crittall-esque windows, offering concierge-serviced views of the surrounding regeneration-scape. But among all the crane towers, one is different from the rest. It stands still, now relieved of its duties, and encased in a silvery sheath of polycarbonate. Big red letters cling to the shimmering shaft, spelling out the new home of the Yard theatre. Once used to haul bits of buildings, the steel crane tower now serves as a beacon-cum-ventilation shaft, glowing by night while exhausting stale air from the theatre below. Continue reading...

With a sound inspired by the San Francisco tech boom, the hyperpop musician is entering the big leagues, and has a slot on Charli xcx’s tour. First she needs to get over her own shyness – not to mention a fear of love songs The life of a rising pop star: One day, you’re performing your own song with Charli xcx, her dancers emulating your choreography, an arena’s worth of fans screaming along. The next, you’re on a surgery table, with a healthcare professional yanking four superfluous teeth out of your mouth. Even pop stars need emergency dental work sometimes. It’s all par for the course for April Grey, the San Francisco-born, Chicago-based musician who records as Underscores. Her 2026 has been, plainly, wild: her third album, U, released in March, was met with acclaim and attracted a small army of new fans. Many of the shows on her tour in support of U, earlier this year, were upgraded due to demand, and one expects the bump she’ll get from her current run supporting Charli xcx’s Music, Fashion, Film tour will push her into even bigger rooms. It’s a blow-up befitting the level of ambition Grey put into U, which is a taut, compulsively listenable pop record that sounds like a mid-2000s Now That’s What I Call Music! compilation as recreated by Aphex Twin. “As I was making it, it felt like a very big swing for the fences,” she says. “I wanted it to be big.” Continue reading...

Soon after launching video downloads with iTunes 6, Apple says it has already sold more than 1 million music videos. iTunes video is a hit! (via Cult of Mac - Your source for the latest Apple news, rumors, analysis, reviews, how-tos and deals.)

Lancashire have moved on without him, but the 44-year-old England stalwart wants to keep going as long as his body allows Jimmy Anderson could teach Philip Marlowe a thing or two about The Long Goodbye. England’s leading wicket-taker in Tests is of that sporting breed who have no interest in bowing out at the top. Like Andy Murray before him, he has shown little enthusiasm to bow out at all, as long as his body allows him to keep doing the thing he loves: getting opposition batsmen out. It was little surprise, then, that when Lancashire announced this week they would not be renewing his contract after 25 years, there was no immediate retirement announcement. Instead there was an irked Instagram post, then silence, as the one-club man considered his options. One of those, apparently, was a T10 cricket tournament in Rome. And lo, it is now confirmed that Anderson will lead (and even “co-own”) the Napoli Knights for 12 days next month. Continue reading...

Coliseum, London Annilese Miskimmon’s new production of Puccini’s complex drama unmoors it from its church and state settings, but there are few gains, only losses in her radical reading. Christopher Purves’ brutish Scarpia, however, is terrific Four years since English National Opera unveiled its previous Tosca (a hyper-stylised affair directed by Christof Loy), the curtain goes up on another new production, this time by ENO’s artistic director Annilese Miskimmon. The appeal of Puccini’s work to any company – never mind one urgently committed to stabilising itself – is clear. Tosca is one of opera’s most bankable titles and a complex, compact drama about power with endless potential for contemporary “relevance”. It’s also an opera rooted in the specifics of three real locations – at least according to the original text and stage directions. Where other operas’ settings are regularly reimagined, Tosca’s ultra-realism has proved exceptionally immovable. Miskimmon’s decision to strip Amanda Holden’s translation of all references to particular places and – still more unusual – to set the entire opera in a single space might thus have been a radical creative departure. Continue reading...

South African stands out, not just because of his height, but England and Australia now find themselves looking for an equivalent If you were to bioengineer a cricketer in a laboratory, which attributes would you give them? You would make them tall, with long limbs and a whiplash action to extract steep bounce. Add speed, movement both ways and a left arm to offer a point of difference. With the bat, make sure they can whack sixes but also go down the gears when an innings starts to unravel. For an added trait, have them catch meteorites in the outfield and the cordon. You might end up with Marco Jansen. At the start of the third Test, the 6ft 8in South African had taken 99 Test wickets at 20.81. His 85 against Australia at Gqeberha in the second Test came after South Africa had slumped to 110 for six before his counterattack helped turn a precarious position into an innings victory. Jansen is still developing as a batter, but his 25.66 average before this current Test understates his potential. Continue reading...

While Halloween is traditionally a family-oriented holiday and an occasion for children to dress up and go trick-or-treating, a unique spin on spooky season is taking off in Japan. ‘Jimi Halloween’ or ‘Mundane Halloween’ sees adult participants dress up as ordinary people in everyday life. They do highly specific tasks, embracing and celebrating unremarkable situations for the event, hosted by online magazine Daily Portal Z in Tokyo’s Shibuya district. Continue reading...

T20 franchise cricket is trash sport and killing the five-day game is cultural vandalism. What would Orwell have made of this? Have you read George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf? This might not sound like a grabby reference, or a killer hook for the algorithm. But Hitler is always hot. Hitler is legacy brand. Hitler is eyeballs. Also, it’s just a great review, even more so because it was written at a time when the world didn’t quite know what Hitler was “all about”. True, you get a vibe off people. The invasion of France. The ranting, visceral hatred. There were signs, clues, indications that this guy, this guy is not my kind of guy. Continue reading...