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.
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.
The unlikely story of an English girl catapulted to French fame – and a relationship with Serge Gainsbourg that resembled a piece of deranged performance art
Boarding a flight in 1983, Jane Birkin found herself wrestling with the open straw basket into which she habitually crammed everything from playscripts to nappies. As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour. He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure. Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock. These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m.
It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story. First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her. Then there’s her lack of mortification at having her whole life upended on a strange man’s lap, nappies and all. Finally, there’s her refusal to feel overawed by her bounty. Birkin famously did not treat her Hermès bag with especial reverence, enthusiastically festooning it with charms, beads, stickers and ribbons. The trend for personalising your handbag with bits of tat was ubiquitous this summer, part of a wider revival of the Birkin aesthetic, comprising flared mid-wash jeans, peasanty cheesecloth blouses and ballet flats. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried.
OVO Wembley Arena With additional sets from Dru Hill and Joe, this revue is a little too nostalgic and lacks the advertised festive spirit – but the vocal prowess on show is undeniable
All of the artists on the lineup for the second annual R&B Xmas Ball – Dru Hill, Joe, Toni Braxton and Boyz II Men – have Christmas albums from the last two decades, but rather than putting a twist on carols or crooner standards, this is an evening that merely uses Christmas as an excuse for a night out to hear earnest, heart-rending 90s R&B.
Dru Hill deliver classic R&B in matching outfits, as their 2000s music videos – as seen on kebab shop TVs nationwide – play out behind them, while a set of mostly slow jams from Joe sets the stage for Braxton.
HBO’s new show is part of a wave of gay-themed romance – from Heartstopper to Red, White and Royal Blue – that desexes gay men just enough to make them palatable, like pets for young women
Even before it dropped on HBO Max last month, this new drama series about two horny gay rival ice hockey players shagging each other off the rink while fighting for sporting supremacy on it was generating its own steam. Perhaps it was creator Jacob Tierney’s terse response to questions of his leading actors’ sexualities while on a recent promotional tour. Or that the show is based on a series of concupiscent novels by Canadian writer Rachel Reid that centre hockey (!), and which ride the current trend for “hate-to-love” romance driving the kids crazy. Actually, it’s probably just all the hot gay sex.
Because Heated Rivalry does get heated. One minute aloof Russian player Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) is making eyes at meek local champion Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams), the next they’re wanking in the shower together. Then getting blowjobs in classy hotel suites. Pretty soon, the boys are going at it hammer and tongs – broken at regular intervals by months-long ellipses, waiting for the hockey circuit to bring them back into each others’ arms. This is also convenient for sexual tension, which would otherwise have to be developed through character and dialogue.
President refers jokingly to renamed ‘Trump-Kennedy Center’ at celebration of stars from music and film
Donald Trump added another job title – awards host – to his presidential portfolio on Sunday when he took charge of the Kennedy Center Honors in Washington, claiming his show was getting “rave reviews” even before it ended.
The US president stayed away from the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts during his first term. But since returning to office in January, he has made the complex a lightning rod in a broader attack against what he has labelled “woke” anti-American culture.
From an enraging indictment of Spotify to Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie’s account of Parkinson’s and a compelling biography of Tupac Shakur, here are five titles that strike a chord
Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist Liz Pelly (Hodder & Stoughton)
Enraging, thoroughly depressing, but entirely necessary, Mood Music offers a timely, forensically researched demolition of Spotify. In Pelly’s account, the music streaming giant views music as a kind of nondescript sonic wallpaper, artists as an unnecessary encumbrance to the business of making more money and its target market not as music fans, but mindless drones who don’t really care what they’re listening to, ripe for manipulation by its algorithm. Sharp business practices and evidence of its deleterious effect on the quality and variety of new music abound: the worst thing is that Pelly can’t really come up with a viable alternative in a world where convenience trumps all.
Men of a Certain Age: My Encounters With Rock Royalty Kate Mossman (Bonnier)
There’s no doubt that Men of a Certain Age is a hard sell, a semi-autobiographical book in which the New Statesman’s arts editor traces her obsession with often wildly unfashionable, ageing male artists – Queen’s Roger Taylor, Bruce Hornsby, Steve Perry of Journey, Jon Bon Jovi among them – through a series of interviews variously absurd, insightful, hair-raising and weirdly touching. But it’s elevated to unmissable status by Mossman’s writing, which is so sparkling, witty and shrewd that your personal feelings about her subjects are rendered irrelevant amid the cocktail of self-awareness, affection and sharp analysis she brings to every encounter. In a world of music books retelling tired legends, Men of a Certain Age offers that rare thing: an entirely original take on rock history.
Sir Michael Caine made a rare public appearance with his grandchildren as he accepted an honour from Vin Diesel at the Red Sea International Film Festival on Thursday, 4 December.
Connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt will love the music put out by A Colourful Storm, the Melbourne-based DJ’s indie label
From Melbourne Recommended if you like the C86 compilation, AU/NZ jangle-pop, Mess Esque Up next Going Back to Sleep out now
Melbourne-based DJ Moopie, AKA Matthew Xue, is renowned for engrossing, wide-ranging sets that can run the gamut from gelid ambient music to churning drum’n’bass and beyond. He also runs A Colourful Storm – a fantastic indie label that massively punches above its weight when it comes to putting out charmingly moody experimental pop music, from artists as disparate as London-based percussionist Valentina Magaletti, dubby Hobart duo Troth, and renowned underground polymath Simon Fisher Turner.
In 2017, the label released I Won’t Have to Think About You, a compilation of winsome, C86-ish indie pop. Earlier this year, it put out Going Back to Sleep, a quasi-sequel to that record which also functions as a neatly drawn guide to some of the best twee-pop groups currently working. Sydney band Daily Toll, whose 2025 debut A Profound Non-Event is one of the year’s underrated gems, contribute Time, a seven-minute melodica-and-guitar reverie. Chateau, the duo of Al Montfort (Terry, Total Control) and Alex Macfarlane (the Stevens, Twerps), push into percussive, psychedelic lounge pop on How Long on the Platform, while Who Cares?, one of Melbourne’s best new bands, channel equal parts Hope Sandoval and Eartheater on Wax and Wane.
Elsewhere, Going Back to Sleep features tracks from San Francisco indie stalwarts the Reds, Pinks and Purples; minimalist Sydney group the Lewers; and sun-dappled folk-pop from Dutch duo the Hobknobs. It’s an unassuming compilation that’s almost certain to become well-loved and frequently referenced among connoisseurs of all things delicate and deeply felt. Shaad D’Souza
From Seamus Heaney’s collected poems and Simon Armitage’s animal spirits, to prizewinners Karen Solie and Vidyan Ravinthiran
Many of 2025’s most notable collections have been powered by a spirit of wild experimentation, pushing at the bounds of what “poetry” might be thought to be. Sarah Hesketh’s 2016 (CB Editions) is a fabulous example: it takes 12 interviews with a variety of anonymous individuals about the events of that year and presents fragments of the transcripts as prose poems. The cumulative effect of these voices is haunting and full of pathos, as “they vote for whoever, and their life stays exactly the same”.
Luke Kennard and Nick Makoha also daringly remixed their source material and inspirations. The former’s latest collection, The Book of Jonah (Picador), moves the minor prophet out of the Bible into a world of arts conferences, where he is continually reminded that his presence everywhere is mostly futile. Makoha’s The New Carthaginians (Penguin) turns Jean-Michel Basquiat’s idea of the exploded collage into a poetic device. The result? “The visible / making itself known by the invisible.”
It starts in a flood of red: a red-curtained stage, red flashing lights. It’s Lady Gaga, so theatrics are par for the course. As the lights go up it becomes clear she’s not standing on a giant stage but, in fact, wearing it.
A militaristic bodice extends into the swooping velvet drapes of a 7.5-metre-highgown. “It’s not just a dress; it’s a moving piece of art, an engineering feat,” says the Australian-Taiwanese designer Samuel Lewis, who dreamed up its design, and created it in collaboration with the LA-based costume designer Athena Lawton.
On Tuesday 7 October the winner(s) of the 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced. The process of choosing the winners is highly secretive, so looking for hints about who will be this year’s laureates is futile. Indeed, in the immediate run-up to announcement, only members of the Nobel Committee for Physics and the Class for Physics at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences know who will be minted as the latest Nobel laureates. What is more, recent prizes provide little guidance because the deliberations and nominations are kept secret for 50 years. So we really are in the dark when it comes to predicting who will be named next week.
If you would like to learn more about how the Nobel Prize for Physics is awarded, check out this profile of Lars Brink, who served on the Nobel Committee for Physics on eight occasions.
But this level of secrecy doesn’t stop people like me from speculating about this year’s winners. Before I explain the rather lovely infographic that illustrates this article – and how it could be used to predict future Nobel winners – I am going to share my first prediction for next week.
Inspired by last year’s physics Nobel prize, which went to two computer scientists for their work on artificial intelligence, I am predicting that the 2025 laureates will be honoured for their work on quantum information and algorithms. Much of the pioneering work in this field was done several decades ago, and has come to fruition in functioning quantum computers and cryptography systems. So the time seems right for an award and I have four people in mind. They are Peter Shor, Gilles Brassard, Charles Bennett and David Deutsch. However, only three can share the prize.
Moving on to our infographic, which gives a bit of pseudoscientific credibility to my next predictions! It charts the history of the physics Nobel prize in terms of field of endeavour. One thing that is apparent from the infographic is that since about 1990 there have been clear gaps between awards in certain fields. If you look at “atomic, molecular and optical physics”, for example, there are gaps between awards of about 5–10 years. One might conclude, therefore, that the Nobel committee considers the field of an award and tries to avoid bunching together awards in the same field.
Looking at the infographic, it looks like we are long overdue a prize in nuclear and particle physics – the last being 10 years ago. However, we haven’t had many big breakthroughs in this field lately. Two aspects of particle physics that have been very fruitful in the 21st century have been the study of the quark–gluon plasma formed when heavy nuclei collide; and the precise study of antimatter – observing how it behaves under gravity, for example. But I think it might be a bit too early for Nobels in these fields.
One possibility for a particle-physics Nobel is the development of the theory of cosmic inflation, which seeks to explain the observed nature of the current universe by invoking an exponential expansion of the universe in its very early history. If an award were given for inflation, it would most certainly go to Alan Guth and Andrei Linde. A natural for the third slot would have been Alexei Starobinsky, who sadly died in 2023 – and Nobels are not awarded posthumously. If there was a third winner for inflation, it would probably be Paul Steinhardt.
Invisibility cloaks
2016 was the last year when we had a Nobel prize in condensed-matter physics, so what work in that field would be worthy of an award this year? There has been a lot of very interesting research done in the field of metamaterials – materials that are engineered to have specific properties, particularly in terms of how they interact with light or sound.
A Nobel prize for metamaterials would surely go to the theorist John Pendry, who pioneered the concept of transformation optics. This simplifies our understanding of how light interacts with metamaterials and helps with the design of objects and devices with amazing properties. These include invisibility cloaks –the first of which was built in 2006 by the experimentalist David Smith, who I think is also a contender for this year’s Nobel prize. Smith’s cloak works at microwave frequencies, but my nomination for the third slot has done an amazing amount of work on developing metamaterials for practical applications in optics. If you follow this field, you know that I am thinking of the applied physicist Federico Capasso – who is also known for the invention of the quantum cascade laser.
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