Carrie Cracknell, Nina Raine and Belarus Free Theatre’s Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin share memories of working with the playwright and ‘guardian angel’
Natalia Kaliada and Nicolai Khalezin, co-founding artistic directors of Belarus Free Theatre
The musician, who wrote My Way and Puppy Love among others, talks career longevity, shrewd business and which star bullied him in his youth
In 1956, when Paul Anka was 15 years old, he idolized Chuck Berry. So, when the star came to play his home town of Ottawa, Canada, the ambitious kid made sure to sneak backstage with his guitar to play him a song he’d just written. “I started singing Diana to Chuck Berry when, suddenly, he stops me and says, ‘That’s the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life, go back to school.’”
Rather than slink away from such a pronouncement, however, Anka used it as a spur. “Revenge is a motivator like you won’t believe,” the 84-year-old star said with an eruptive laugh the other day. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to show him.’ That attitude has prevailed for me through my entire life.”
She brought the house down as a stripper in Gypsy, going on to star in films with Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson. Now, at 96, she’s stealing the show in Eleanor the Great. What’s her secret? ‘Be a looker-ahead’
It is surely a comfort to anyone still awaiting mega-success to know that June Squibb was in her mid-80s before she hit the big time. Her role as a foul-mouthed matriarch in the 2013 film Nebraska brought her an Oscar nomination, and she had her first leading role in last year’s action comedy, Thelma. Now she’s playing the lead again, in the new film Eleanor the Great and she’s currently in rehearsals for a show on Broadway. Is Squibb, who has just turned 96, sick of talking about her late-peaking success? “I think people are interested, so no, it’s not a bad thing,” she says. “But it is funny, because when I first came to New York – it was the 50s – I did The Boy Friend, a musical, and I was a big hit.” But it was theatre, she concedes. “The film thing is so different.”
In Eleanor the Great, Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut, Squibb plays Eleanor Morgenstein, a 94-year-old woman who, mourning the loss of her best friend Bessie, moves from Florida to New York to be near her daughter. Encouraged to make new friends, Eleanor goes to the local Jewish community centre to join a choir, but the woman belting out Stephen Sondheim is enough to make anyone rush for the door. “Oh god,” mutters Eleanor, backing away, before being scooped up by the Holocaust survivors group, meeting at the same time, who erroneously assume she’s one of them. Lonely and grieving, US-born Eleanor finds herself passing off Bessie’s survival story as her own.
From the trauma and triumphs of Olympic cyclist Bradley Wiggins to the secret life of a match fixer
The Chain Bradley Wiggins, (HarperCollins)
The Tour de France winner’s autobiography begins with him sneaking into his walk-in wardrobe and doing a line of coke off his Olympic gold medal: the final emblematic descent from his crowning summer of 2012. And yet for all the personal lows chronicled here – addiction, self-harm, the collapse of his marriage, the haunting memories of his difficult father and of a coach who sexually abused him – this is not your classic misery memoir. Disarmingly honest and roguishly humorous, it is a journey of rediscovery: a man knocked sideways by the toxic winds of sport and celebrity, finally learning to stand straight again.
The Escape: The Tour, the Cyclist and Me Pippa York and David Walsh (Mudlark) In a previous life Robert Millar was one of this country’s greatest cyclists: a stern Glaswegian who won the King of the Mountains jersey at the 1984 Tour de France. Now known as Pippa York, she returns to the race in the company of the journalist David Walsh. It’s a freewheeling, fascinating read that defies genre: part travelogue and part memoir, it dances between present and past, sporting observation and self-reflection, drugs that help you cheat and drugs that help you live. And for all the pain and anguish that gets unlocked here, this is a book without a bitter or hateful bone in its body.
The award-winning director has endured imprisonment and censorship by his country’s leaders, who insist his movies are ‘anti-government propaganda’. Days before he was sentenced to further prison time, he spoke to Adam White about his new film ‘It Was Just an Accident’, and why making art always trumps dire consequences
As the Grand Theft Auto co-writer launches a new project, he reflects on his hugely successful open-world adventures and where game design might go next
It is hard to think of a more modern entertainment format than the open-world video game. These sprawling technological endeavours, which mix narrative, social connectivity and the complete freedom to explore, are uniquely immersive and potentially endless. But do they represent a whole new idea of storytelling?
This week I met Dan Houser, the co-founder of Rockstar and lead writer on Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, who has been in London to talk about his new company, Absurd Ventures. He’s working on a range of intriguing projects, including the novel and podcast series A Better Paradise (about a vast online game that goes tragically wrong), and a comedy-adventure set in an online world named Absurdaverse. He told me that, 15 years ago, he was doing press interviews for the Grand Theft Auto IV expansion packs when he had something of a revelation about the series.
‘When I saw him leaning back on the floor, I said, “Donato, please don’t move!” Then I jumped on a ladder and shot him from above’
This image is part of a series commissioned by the Italian Paralympic Committee. They asked me to photograph the country’s leading athletes before the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. I probably covered 30 different people over three days – I’m a quick shooter. I started out photographing on film, which is still my preferred medium. Even when I’m shooting digitally, I’m very selective and take care with every click.
On a logistical level, it was much easier for me to work in a studio, though that was something I don’t usually choose to do. I’m more of an outside photographer: I like to go on location or shoot people in a park.
Starry cast, including Felicity Jones and Chloë Grace Moretz, can’t save misfiring cross between Home Alone and The Family Stone
If you’ve already over-indulged in Netflix’s brand of cheap and, overwhelmingly, cheerless Christmas movies this season, then Amazon has something a little meatier to add to your plate. Like Netflix, it also has more than enough tinnily made Hallmark ripoffs (step forward, Tyler Perry’s Finding Joy), but it’s also aiming a little higher with Oh. What. Fun. It’s a more robustly made attempt to recall something we used to see on the big rather than small screen with a cast to match, a starry cross between Home Alone and The Family Stone with an all-new soundtrack from some unusually upper-tier artists.
Given the low budget and even lower ambition of the genre, it’s easy to be blinded by the names attached. The film is directed by Michael Showalter, the trusted hand behind films like The Big Sick, Wet Hot American Summer and The Idea of You! It stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Felicity Jones, Jason Schwartzman, Danielle Brooks and Chloë Grace Moretz! There are new songs from Fleet Foxes, Gwen Stefani and Sharon Van Etten, among others! Enough experience might have shown us that even the most talented people do not tend to make the greatest films, but there’s something about the sheer effort being poured into this one that feels notable as others have seemingly given up trying. Could actual fun be on the Christmas cards?
New York venues aren’t required to give out water – but nightlife workers say it could make the difference between a safe evening out and an ER visit
When Brooklyn metal band Contract performs around New York, they expect a mosh pit: thrashing bodies shoving and jumping along to the music. They also want to make sure the amped-up, usually drunk crowd stays hydrated. Without water, a mosher might feel sick, faint or pass out. “You don’t want anyone to get injured or hurt,” frontman Pele Uriel said.
Most of the spaces Uriel plays or visits have water stations where customers can easily fill up. But some do not. The worst offenders sell bottles of water at astronomical prices, from $5 to $10. “There have been times when I asked for water, but they charged a lot, so I went to the store next door to buy some,” Uriel said.
Et si l’union du couple le plus médiatisé de la planète devenait un moteur économique mondial ? C’est l’un des scénarios imaginés par Saxo Bank dans ses prédictions 2026. Une hypothèse fantasque, oui, mais qui en dit long sur l’influence culturelle gargantuesque de Taylor Swift.
David Heyman has joined the French media company StudioCanal with plans to bring one of the bestselling children’s book series of all time to the screen
The film-makers behind the successful Paddington series are to embark on a feature film adaptation of another British family favourite, the Mr Men and Little Miss series of illustrated children’s books.
David Heyman, whose Heyday Films produced Paddington and Paddington 2 as well as the Harry Potter series, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and White Noise, is to join with the UK arm of French media company StudioCanal to make the film.
Hello and welcome to the Long Wave. This week, I had the huge pleasure of an audience with Peepal Tree Press, which has been home to authors such as Bernardine Evaristo and Roger Robinson. Peepal Tree publishes books from the Caribbean and its diaspora, and has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. I spoke to its founder, Jeremy Poynting, and fiction editor Jacob Ross, and what ensued was a masterclass not only in publishing, but in diasporic art.
À 23 ans, le céréalier de Saint-Laurent-Lolmie a décroché la 4e place de la présélection nationale du concours Miss & Mister France Agricole. Une façon de défendre les valeurs d’un métier passion.
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