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Following the redesign of the Apple Music app icon, which replaced the familiar white music note on a red background with a black-and-white look, Apple today updated Apple Music Classical to match the new design. more…

The former KCRW DJ has brought his beloved "Freaks Only" show to an internet radio format dedicated to the belief that music sounds better when a human is choosing what you hear.

The actor answers your questions about trapeze lessons, Bond villain ambitions and Michael Caine’s top tips You looked as if you had such a good time on Celebrity Traitors last year – you had them hanging on your every word. What was it like? Who have you kept in touch with? breezehillpete They absolutely didn’t hang on my every word. I’m fascinated to watch it now, because at a distance, I can see how people follow each other. That herd mentality is very evident at the round table, but I always went in a different direction and people didn’t follow me. Then, of course, I accused Alan [Carr] at the end: “I think you are one, aren’t you?”, so I had to go the next day. I didn’t quite know what I was letting myself in for, but I had a great time. Kate [Garraway] and I had to go on that Uncloaked thing after. She turned to me and she said: “Oh, but Celia, we’re now all one big happy family, aren’t we?” I said: “Well, frankly, I don’t want to see any of them ever again in the whole of my life,” and everybody laughed. But truthfully, we haven’t really run into each other since. Nevertheless, I think I was with a marvellous company, and I liked them all. Continue reading...

Surreal, mysterious and with an outlandish origin story, Jan Potocki’s The Manuscript Found in Saragossa has amassed a cult following that includes Salman Rushdie and Jerry Garcia. But it’s the book’s global humanism makes it relevant now, say the curators of a new exhibition A young Walloon officer called Alphonse van Worden travels through the Sierra Morena on his way to Madrid to join the Spanish army. Along the way he has an erotic encounter with two demonic Moorish sisters, falls foul of shape-shifting apparitions and is tested by a Jewish Kabbalist attempting to use mystical formulas to control spirits and decipher the universe. All these things happen in what might be one of the least-known great novels of the European canon, an encyclopedic roman-monde written more than 200 years ago called The Manuscript Found in Saragossa. Continue reading...

EXCLUSIVE: Mark Duplass, Mel Elsyn and Jay Duplass have joined Jan Naszewski’s short comedy film Exam as executive producers through the Duplass Brothers’ Productions label. To folks on the international film sales and distribution circuit, Naszewski is known as the congenial founding head of Warsaw-based company New Europe Film Sales. The industry veteran, who has […]

A young Singaporean couple who sell pictures of the wife’s feet online end up with a corpse in their freezer in “Build to Order,” the debut feature from director Huang Junxiang, which is at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei this week. Singaporean couple Penny and Allan both work in real estate. They […]

What happens when a circus daughter, an Ezra Pound scholar and three anonymous distilleries attempt to rewrite the rules of Islay whisky? Douglas Blyde investigates a collection which takes its cues from geology rather than geography’s more familiar celebrities.

The Indian-Irish poet on the Mahabharata retelling that inspired her to write, Arundhati Roy’s courage, and the poetry of Lucille Clifton My earliest reading memory My father was a sailor and my mother a teacher. They were both voracious readers. I was lucky enough to come from a home full of books and when we joined my father out at sea for extended periods of time, my mother carried plenty of books for me to read. I remember sitting by the porthole in our cabin, looking out at the sea on a sunny day, the ship moving calmly through the waters. I was reading The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, a book that still feels like a dream. I was four years old. My favourite book growing up There were so many, but when I was a child experiencing the death of my great-grandmother, a maternal figure who I adored, The Neverending Story by Michael Ende became the most essential read for me. I must have read that book a hundred times. I also loved the Winnie-the-Pooh books, Enid Blyton’s Faraway Tree series, the Panchatantra tales, Malgudi Days by RK Narayan and the Asterix comics by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. Continue reading...

Ahead of her farewell UK concert next year, the 87-year-old singer-songwriter will join us to answer your questions She has lived an extraordinary life at the forefront of US folk music, but at the age of 87, Judy Collins is getting ready to retire from touring. Her farewell UK concert at the London Palladium is approaching, and ahead of that she’ll join us to answer your questions. Born in Seattle in 1939, Collins’ career started out in the fertile folk scene of early 1960s New York, and became a close peer of the era’s great singer-songwriters. She recorded Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides, Now, even before Joni Mitchell did – reaching the US Top 10 with her version, which also won a Grammy – and also recorded early versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and more. A relationship (and its end) with Stephen Stills of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young resulted in a torrid back-and-forth of poignant songwriting. Continue reading...

EXCLUSIVE: Jonas Barnes’ Pixie USA is launching Christmas at Maple Hollow Inn as one of the first microdrama to use Meta’s new Series tool. The romantic holiday drama will star Analisa Southworth Wall and Thomas King, and was developed in partnership with the Bob Evans grocery. The aim is to recreate the feel of a […]