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‘Can we have more comedies?’: Armenian cinema processes trauma as country wrangles EU membership – and Trump

The second year of London’s Armenian film festival reflects country in flux as legacy of recent conflict with Azerbaijan hangs over attempts to strengthen ties with the west

There is a point during Tamara Stepanyan’s My Armenian Phantoms when the documentary cuts to the final scene of the 1980 Soviet film, A Piece of Sky, in which the orphaned lead character, joyfully rides a horse and cart through the town that had long shunned him and the sex worker he married as social outcasts.

A flock of birds are then framed gliding through the pristine blue sky above. It’s a sequence depicting the desire to overcome the forces that seek to limit and constrain which lay at the heart of the director Henrik Malyan’s new wave critique.

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© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

© Photograph: PR

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American Canto by Olivia Nuzzi review – insufferable filler that sidesteps the real issues

The reporter’s affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr raised a whole host of questions, few of which get answers in this pretentious memoir

Did he take me seriously?” Olivia Nuzzi wonders in the midst of her infamous affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr. Nuzzi, then Washington correspondent for New York magazine, has just learned that she and the Politician, as she calls RFK in her new book, may overlap during a visit to Mar-a-Lago. Nuzzi, worried Donald Trump will catch on to the relationship and start spreading rumours, convenes an emergency meeting with the Politician to strategise. RFK doesn’t see the big deal.

So, she agonises “Did he take me seriously?” and reflects that she had “little cause to consider the question before now.”

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© Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

© Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

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‘One of the best actors of his generation’: Daniel Day-Lewis defends Paul Dano after Tarantino criticism

Day-Lewis, who suggested Dano for his part in There Will Be Blood, praised the actor, as did Ben Stiller and Batman director Matt Reeves

Paul Dano’s There Will Be Blood co-star Daniel Day-Lewis has defended the actor after he was criticised by Quentin Tarantino.

The director took issue with Dano’s talents while discussing his list of the best films of the century on Bret Easton Ellis’s podcast. Tarantino said he would have moved Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 drama higher than No 5 had a different actor played preacher Eli Sunday.

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© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

© Photograph: Ghoulardi Film Company/Allstar

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Anybody heard of a rehearsal? Mangling nominees’ names may be traditional – but it’s still embarrassing

Yesterday’s Golden Globes announcement was a masterclass in mispronunciation that threatens to undo every effort to internationalise awards. Why can’t producers just make their presenters practise?

The day after an awards show announces its nominations, the focus typically falls on the nominees. However, yesterday’s Golden Globe nominations were a little different, because all anyone can talk about is how badly the actor Marlon Wayans mangled everyone’s name.

If you didn’t see it, it was a masterclass in getting it wrong. Watching Wayans announce the Golden Globe nominations was like living through one of those anxiety dreams where you’re asked to fly a jumbo jet and realise that you don’t know what any of the controls do. If you did see it, then I’m sure your toes will uncurl eventually.

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© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

© Photograph: Jim Ruymen/UPI/Shutterstock

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Preparation for the Next Life review – deeply felt story of love among the marginalised in New York

Bing Liu’s film is an unflinching portrait of an undocumented Uyghur immigrant and a traumatised US veteran whose fragile connection is strained by their pasts

Chinese-American film-maker Bing Liu made an impression with the poignant documentary Minding the Gap about people from his home town in Illinois; now he pivots to features with this sad and sombre study of romance and life choices among those on the margins of US society, adapted from the prize-winning novel of the same name by Atticus Lish.

The scene is the no-questions-asked world of New York’s Chinatown; newcomer Sebiye Behtiyar plays Aishe, a Chinese Uyghur Muslim undocumented immigrant. One day she catches the eye of Skinner, played by Fred Hechinger, a young military veteran who impulsively starts to talk to her. There is a spark between them and then something more.

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© Photograph: Jaclyn Martinez

© Photograph: Jaclyn Martinez

© Photograph: Jaclyn Martinez

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Hannigan/Chamayou review – strange and beautiful musical magic

Wigmore Hall, London
Barbara Hannigan and Bertrand Chamayou were exhilarating and extraordinary in John Zorn’s monumental Jumalattaret; a beautifully intimate performance of Messiaen’s Chants de Terre et de Ciel completed an enthralling evening

One generation’s “unperformable” is another’s repertoire staple. Tristan und Isolde, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Beethoven’s Ninth were all once declared beyond reach. But when Barbara Hannigan – the fearless, seemingly limitless soprano with more than 100 world premieres to her name – admits that a work came close, reducing her to “a state of panic” over a multi-year study period, you believe her.

Inspired by Finland’s national epic the Kalevala, John Zorn’s Jumalattaret is less a song-cycle than a musical seance, summoning a series of spirits and goddesses in sound. The singer morphs from persona to persona in yelps and keening cries, guttural moans and shouts, sometimes anchored, sometimes released by the piano (here Bertrand Chamayou) – an ever-present sorcerer’s assistant.

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© Photograph: Sisi Burn

© Photograph: Sisi Burn

© Photograph: Sisi Burn

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Growing pains: the struggle to make a must-see gen Z TV show

Hollywood is still trying to court younger audiences but this year’s crop of new comedies, from Adults to I Love LA, have yet to prove essential

This year, despite not particularly liking the show nor wanting to, I have thought a lot about the opening scene to Adults. The FX half-hour comedy about a group of recent college graduates in New York begins, naturally, on the subway; what seems like an over-studied portrait of early adulthood intimacy – tangled limbs, in-group references, aggressively relaxed banter – quickly devolves into a standoff between a creepy subway masturbator and the group’s instigator, Issa (Amita Rao), trying to out-masturbate him to make a wildly off point about feminism. “Is this the world you want?!?” she shouts at him, hand vigorously in pants.

The moment is intentionally off-putting, perhaps too much so – I’m as ripe as anyone for surprise, but found the try-hardness of this shock memorably irksome. Yet it’s also unintentionally revealing: this, it implicitly screams, is a show to get young people’s attention. A similar anxiety courses through the opening of I Love LA, HBO’s west-coast rejoinder to Adults that is similarly pitched as a zeitgeist-y take on the thrilling chaos of young adulthood. We meet Maia, played by creator and co-writer Rachel Sennott, mid-sex with her boyfriend, heedlessly determined to come before going to work, even if it means ignoring an earthquake.

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© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

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Skate Story review – hellish premise aside, this is skateboarding paradise

Sam Eng/Devolver Digital, PC, PS5, Switch 2
An exquisitely fluid game of tricks, grinds and manuals is framed by a story that uncovers the poignancy of the infamously painful pastime

Skateboarding video games live and die by their vibe. The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles were anarchic, arcade fun while the recent return of EA’s beloved Skate franchise offered competent yet jarringly corporate realism. Skate Story, which is mostly the work of solo developer Sam Eng, offers a more impressionistic interpretation while capturing something of the sport’s essential spirit. It transposes the boarding action to a demonic underworld where the aesthetic is less fire and brimstone than glittering, 2010s-era vaporwave. It is also the most emotionally real a skateboarding game has ever felt.

The premise is ingenious: you are a demon made out of “pain and glass”. Skate to the moon and swallow it, says the devil, and you shall be freed. So that is exactly what you do. You learn to ollie first, a “delicate, precise trick” according to the artfully written in-game text. Then come the pop shuvit, kickflip, heelflip and more.

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© Photograph: Devolver Digital

© Photograph: Devolver Digital

© Photograph: Devolver Digital

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