<![CDATA[EL PAÍS]]>https://english.elpais.comMon, 18 May 2026 10:56:44 +0000en1hourly1<![CDATA[The conflictive relationship between Paris and the six million dead in its catacombs: ‘The goal isn’t to turn it into Disneyland’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-17/the-conflictive-relationship-between-paris-and-the-six-million-dead-in-its-catacombs-the-goal-isnt-to-turn-it-into-disneyland.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2026-05-17/the-conflictive-relationship-between-paris-and-the-six-million-dead-in-its-catacombs-the-goal-isnt-to-turn-it-into-disneyland.htmlSun, 17 May 2026 04:05:00 +0000In 1861, the photographer Félix Nadar historically immersed himself in the catacombs of Paris, the vast network of tunnels in which rest the remains of some six million people. Used as an ossuary since the end of the 18th century, it makes use of the nearly 190 miles of galleries below the capital resulting from limestone extraction. In so doing, it put an end to problems with the over-saturation of cemeteries (in addition to their foul odors, the city was still expanding), and Napoleonic France repurposed the morgue into a monumental work of funereal art, opening it to the public in 1809. Under the tutelage of the engineer Héricart de Thury, who decorated and designed its walls with rows of bones, symbols and plaques indicating their cemetery of origin, the catacombs are replete with literary inscriptions, presided over by the Dantesque “Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead” at its entrance in the city’s 14th arrondissement, the official start of its tours.

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]]>Félix Nadar<![CDATA[How Edwyn Collins survived two strokes, returned to music and is now retiring with honors]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-05-02/how-edwyn-collins-survived-two-strokes-returned-to-music-and-is-now-retiring-with-honors.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-05-02/how-edwyn-collins-survived-two-strokes-returned-to-music-and-is-now-retiring-with-honors.htmlSat, 02 May 2026 04:00:00 +0000Edwyn Collins’ retirement from the stage at age 66 has come two decades later than anyone could have imagined. In 2005, the Scottish musician survived two cerebral haemorrhages. He was left with aphasia, a disorder that affected his communication abilities, both in expressing himself and understanding information. He also suffered paralysis on the right side of his body, which disabled one arm, although he was able to walk again with the aid of a cane. According to doctors, the prospects for improvement were slim. Founder of Orange Juice, an emblematic post-punk band that was more influential than popular (their career, which began in the late 1970s, barely spanned five years), Collins later had a respectable solo career that peaked in 1994 with the success of his song “A Girl Like You.”

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]]>Fenella Lorimar<![CDATA[Three albums in exchange for getting out of jail: 2Pac’s last months before his murder 30 years ago]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-31/three-albums-in-exchange-for-getting-out-of-jail-2pacs-last-months-before-his-murder-30-years-ago.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-03-31/three-albums-in-exchange-for-getting-out-of-jail-2pacs-last-months-before-his-murder-30-years-ago.htmlTue, 31 Mar 2026 19:03:07 +0000For some, the agreement that Tupac Shakur signed with Death Row Records represented his death sentence. For the rapper, it meant freedom. Shakur had spent eight months in jail, convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in the presence of other men. On October 12, 1995, the artist known as 2Pac was released from prison after the head of the record label paid bail of nearly one and a half million dollars, with the commitment to record three albums for the label. The next day, he got to work and went to the studio to begin the sessions for his most ambitious project: All Eyez On Me, a double album with 27 tracks and a runtime of over two hours. Released in February 1996, 30 years ago, it received excellent reviews and remains the best-selling album of his career, considered one of the best in the history of the genre.

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]]><![CDATA[Why Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are working together in their 50s: Together again, for the most challenging phase of their careers ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-15/why-ben-affleck-and-matt-damon-are-working-together-in-their-50s-together-again-for-the-most-challenging-phase-of-their-careers.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2026-02-15/why-ben-affleck-and-matt-damon-are-working-together-in-their-50s-together-again-for-the-most-challenging-phase-of-their-careers.htmlSun, 15 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000More than 50 years after the fact, Matt Damon (55 years old; Cambridge, Massachusetts) still ugly cries over the Beatles’ breakup. According to the actor, Peter Jackson’s documentary The Beatles: Get Back (2021) left him devastated when a scene featuring the band’s famous concert on the roof of its recording studio was followed by a postscript indicating that it was their final performance. An emotional Damon called up his friend Ben Affleck (53 years old, Berkeley, California). “Who cares if we oversaturate the marketplace with movies we’re both in?” Damon asked. “We’re crazy if we don’t take advantage of the fact that we are both still here and able to do this.” And in just five years, that call, and the renewed alliance to which it led, have resulted in a string of new movies. The most recent, police thriller The Rip, arrived on Netflix mid-January. The two are not only together in front of the camera — it was also created by their own production company.

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]]>Mitchell Gerber<![CDATA[Rowan Atkinson tops Netflix at 70: ‘He’s as funny as ever’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-12-30/rowan-atkinson-tops-netflix-at-70-hes-as-funny-as-ever.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-12-30/rowan-atkinson-tops-netflix-at-70-hes-as-funny-as-ever.htmlTue, 30 Dec 2025 15:43:12 +0000If in Life of Brian (1979) Monty Python imagined the existence of a neighbor in Jesus’ Nativity scene who was born on the same day, a new British comedy, the series Man vs. Baby, asks another weighty question: what fate would have befallen the Son of God if, instead of choosing the Virgin Mary as his mother, he had entrusted the sacred task to Mr. Bean. More or less.

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]]>Jeff Spicer<![CDATA[‘Dark, brutal, beautiful and mad’: Van der Graaf Generator, the darkest and most influential group in progressive rock ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-12-07/dark-brutal-beautiful-and-mad-van-der-graaf-generator-the-darkest-and-most-influential-group-in-progressive-rock.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-12-07/dark-brutal-beautiful-and-mad-van-der-graaf-generator-the-darkest-and-most-influential-group-in-progressive-rock.htmlSun, 07 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000A Van de Graaff generator is a device capable of producing high voltages. The charge — generated by contact — is transferred via a conveyor belt to a hollow metal sphere, which acts as a terminal. The generator is a star attraction in science classrooms and museums, due to the educational value it has when someone attempts to explain electrostatic phenomena. A volunteer is often asked to touch it… and they end up with their hair a mess.

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]]>Ian Dickson<![CDATA[‘Wicked’ and the controversial practice of splitting a film into two: ‘It’s like releasing the same thing twice’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-11-28/wicked-and-the-controversial-practice-of-splitting-a-film-into-two-its-like-releasing-the-same-thing-twice.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-11-28/wicked-and-the-controversial-practice-of-splitting-a-film-into-two-its-like-releasing-the-same-thing-twice.htmlFri, 28 Nov 2025 15:20:01 +0000It took Spanish pop group Los Sírex less than three minutes to explain what they would do if they had a broom, but last year the film Wicked — that is, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) told from the villain’s perspective — spent nearly three hours just narrating how the Wicked Witch of the West found the implement that allows her to fly. This didn’t prevent the film, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, from becoming the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation, while using only half of its script. For the modest price of another ticket, the second half, Wicked: For Good, has just arrived in theaters, grossing nearly $226 million worldwide in its opening weekend. The combined budget stands at around $300 million, and that figure was already more than covered by the initial installment, which had box office returns of over $750 million, so everything the second part generates will be pure profit.

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]]>Taylor Hill<![CDATA[The ‘Louvre detective’ is a 15-year-old boy: A chronology of confusion amidst grand theft ]]>https://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-13/the-louvre-detective-is-a-15-year-old-boy-a-chronology-of-confusion-amidst-grand-theft.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/international/2025-11-13/the-louvre-detective-is-a-15-year-old-boy-a-chronology-of-confusion-amidst-grand-theft.htmlThu, 13 Nov 2025 11:15:51 +0000The expression “straight out of the movies” has been used liberally over the last month, and rightly so, to describe the happenings on October 19 at the Louvre Museum in Paris. That morning, in broad daylight, thieves accessed the institution’s Apollo gallery by using a movable staircase, and with the help of an angle grinder, stole nine jewels from the French crown (though they managed to drop an actual crown along the way).

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]]>Thibault Camus<![CDATA[The ‘Queen Mary’s’ strange second life: From maritime jewel to paranormal attraction]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-11-09/the-queen-marys-strange-second-life-from-maritime-jewel-to-paranormal-attraction.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-11-09/the-queen-marys-strange-second-life-from-maritime-jewel-to-paranormal-attraction.htmlSun, 09 Nov 2025 04:40:00 +0000In 1937, the renowned 40-year-old American journalist Paul Gallico made the bold decision to stop writing sports news to reinvent himself and dedicate his life to what he loved: fiction. He had just divorced his second wife, and that year he began this uncertain new personal and professional chapter by indulging in the luxury of traveling first class on the RMS Queen Mary, the newly launched British ocean liner that, over the course of about four days, covered the route between New York and Southampton (in southern England) and vied for the title of the world’s fastest ship with the French SS Normandie. One morning, at breakfast, his destiny and that of the ship became permanently intertwined, far beyond the European port they were heading for.

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]]>Express<![CDATA[How ‘Babe’ altered our view of farm animals]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-29/how-babe-altered-our-view-of-farm-animals.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-29/how-babe-altered-our-view-of-farm-animals.htmlFri, 29 Aug 2025 15:37:14 +0000It was perfectly clear to children of the 1990s that animals could be anything they wanted. In Air Bud (1997), the golden retriever became a sports hero after referees concluded there was no rule against a dog playing basketball. This followed Babe (1995), a pig who surprised the world with his skill in herding sheep.

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]]><![CDATA[‘Running Man’ remake rekindles obsession with deadly contests: ‘Let the poor fight among themselves’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-19/running-man-remake-rekindles-obsession-with-deadly-contests-let-the-poor-fight-among-themselves.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-08-19/running-man-remake-rekindles-obsession-with-deadly-contests-let-the-poor-fight-among-themselves.htmlTue, 19 Aug 2025 14:06:54 +0000Although poet Gil Scott-Heron predicted that the revolution wouldn’t be televised, in the film The Running Man (1987), Arnold Schwarzenegger once again proved that axioms are meant to be overturned. The bodybuilder was the star of a dystopian movie where a totalitarian government was established in the United States and the most disadvantaged were hunted down in a brutal, virtually impossible-to-win television competition.

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]]><![CDATA[‘Eight legs is too many legs!’: Why spiders have reigned supreme in horror films for 70 years]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-06-01/eight-legs-is-too-many-legs-why-spiders-have-reigned-supreme-in-horror-films-for-70-years.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-06-01/eight-legs-is-too-many-legs-why-spiders-have-reigned-supreme-in-horror-films-for-70-years.htmlSun, 01 Jun 2025 04:00:00 +0000One of the first horror stories featuring spiders was published by H.G. Wells in 1903. The story was titled The Valley of Spiders and its cryptic nature has given rise to various interpretations over more than a century.

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]]>Bettmann<![CDATA[The rise and fall of Jon Voight, the 1970s countercultural icon who became Trump’s biggest supporter in Hollywood]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-05-09/the-rise-and-fall-of-jon-voight-the-1970s-countercultural-icon-who-became-trumps-biggest-supporter-in-hollywood.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-05-09/the-rise-and-fall-of-jon-voight-the-1970s-countercultural-icon-who-became-trumps-biggest-supporter-in-hollywood.htmlFri, 09 May 2025 12:37:50 +0000The announcement that Donald Trump will impose 100% tariffs on film productions from outside the United States has shaken the industry. And the person instigating the aggressive taxes is none other than one of its legends, Jon Voight. A key figure of the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s and star of classics such as Midnight Cowboy (1969), the 86-year-old actor confirmed in a video on his official X account that he had met with the president over the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago mansion to present him with a “plan to rescue Hollywood.”

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]]>Screen Archives<![CDATA[The mystery of the Residents, the faceless cult band that mocked the Beatles]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-04-24/the-mystery-of-the-residents-the-faceless-nameless-cult-band-that-mocked-the-beatles.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-04-24/the-mystery-of-the-residents-the-faceless-nameless-cult-band-that-mocked-the-beatles.htmlThu, 24 Apr 2025 13:15:54 +0000The theory of obscurity argues that the author of a work should remain anonymous, to prevent the individual’s ego and the desire for recognition from corrupting the purity of the artistic act. It is said to have been formulated by a Bavarian composer named N. Senada, whose identity, of course, is in question. The mysterious N. Senada is also credited with the theory of phonetic organization, a principle for constructing music by juxtaposing single sounds, rather than melodies or harmonies.

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]]>Paul Natkin<![CDATA[Sly Stone, the artist who changed music history and disappeared: ‘He had everything and almost deliberately threw it away’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-04-16/sly-stone-the-artist-who-changed-music-history-and-disappeared-he-had-everything-and-almost-deliberately-threw-it-away.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-04-16/sly-stone-the-artist-who-changed-music-history-and-disappeared-he-had-everything-and-almost-deliberately-threw-it-away.htmlWed, 16 Apr 2025 13:11:28 +0000After Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney, a late-1960s American magazine boldly predicted that Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart) would be the generation’s “new leader.” With a smaller catalog and a shorter reign at the top than those iconic figures, the claim may now seem inflated — but at the time, it reflected a real sense of promise. As the frontman of Sly & The Family Stone, the African American musician was becoming a chronicler of a paradigm shift and the voice of a new horizon shaped by the hippie dream, protests against the Vietnam War, and the civil rights movement. Two historic performances sealed his status in 1969: first at the Harlem Cultural Festival, then at Woodstock.

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]]>GAB Archive<![CDATA[John McTiernan, director of ‘Die Hard’: ‘My movies were quite patriotic, but being in prison changed my attitude’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-03-29/john-mctiernan-director-of-die-hard-my-movies-were-quite-patriotic-but-being-in-prison-changed-my-attitude.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-03-29/john-mctiernan-director-of-die-hard-my-movies-were-quite-patriotic-but-being-in-prison-changed-my-attitude.htmlSat, 29 Mar 2025 04:00:00 +0000In conversations about the golden age of Hollywood action fiy dicelms, references to one or more of the films of John McTiernan (Albany, New York, 74 years old) are inevitable. In the late glow of the 1980s alone, the director shot three back-to-back classics: Predator (1987), Die Hard (1988) and The Hunt for Red October (1990). After receiving a tribute in Paris from the French Cinemathèque, McTiernan visited Spain to collect the honorary award he received this year from the Sombra fantasy film festival. The veteran filmmaker is grateful for the successive career recognitions, but as he tells EL PAÍS, he’s far from calling it a day. As he revealed in talks organized by Sombra, more than 20 years after his last film, he is planning his return to the big screen, though he’s still reluctant to share many details. “I’m a little superstitious about talking about movies until we’re shooting them. I’ve had a couple of independently financed films that I was certain were going to happen and then didn’t. I’m just going to wait and see.”

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]]>Sunset Boulevard<![CDATA[Surviving failure, stereotypes, and Bill Murray: The return of Lucy Liu, the star who almost reigned in Hollywood]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-03-20/surviving-failure-stereotypes-and-bill-murray-the-return-of-lucy-liu-the-star-who-almost-reigned-in-hollywood.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-03-20/surviving-failure-stereotypes-and-bill-murray-the-return-of-lucy-liu-the-star-who-almost-reigned-in-hollywood.htmlThu, 20 Mar 2025 15:04:02 +0000Lucy Liu’s return to the big screen has caused a stir, but in the best way. Presence is a horror story set in a single location, a family home, and narrated from the point of view of the ghost who occupies it, with whom we, the viewers, silently observe its inhabitants. Directed by Steven Soderbergh, Oscar winner for Traffic (2000) and one of the icons of American independent cinema, the $10 million it has grossed worldwide to date have already more than covered the budget of just $2 million. At its first screening at the Sundance Film Festival a year ago, there were reviews stating that the film was indeed tense, and a handful of viewers walked out of the theater due to “stress.” Even Liu, the matriarch of the fictional family who saw Presence for the first time that night, admitted: “I’m devastated. My body is reacting as if I didn’t make the film.”

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]]>John Nacion<![CDATA[Why Will Ferrell became the great anti-macho comedian of his generation  ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-09/why-will-ferrell-became-the-great-anti-macho-comedian-of-his-generation.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-02-09/why-will-ferrell-became-the-great-anti-macho-comedian-of-his-generation.htmlSun, 09 Feb 2025 04:30:00 +0000In a bid to tap into millennial humor, Amazon Prime Video’s latest original movie, You’re Cordially Invited, looks like a Reese Witherspoon romance and a Will Ferrell absurdist comedy rolled into one. Ferrell appears on the billboards with Witherspoon, but also wrestling an alligator, in a nod to his earlier movies Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) and Semi Pro (2008), in which he fought with bears.

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]]>Lia Toby<![CDATA[Bambi’s mother dies again: Why the scene continues to traumatize the world]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-01-19/bambis-mother-dies-again-why-the-scene-continues-to-traumatize-the-world.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-01-19/bambis-mother-dies-again-why-the-scene-continues-to-traumatize-the-world.htmlSun, 19 Jan 2025 04:45:00 +0000Bambi is back on the big screen. Unlike Disney’s live-action adaptations like The Jungle Book (2016) or The Lion King (2019), which relied on computer-generated animals, this new version takes a semi-documentary approach, with shots taken in nature. It’s a French production, titled Bambi: A Tale of Life in the Woods. Directed by Michel Fessler, who previously wrote The Emperor’s Voyage (2005), a film that captured the migration of penguins as a narrative, Bambi uses montage and a voice-over (provided by French singer Mylène Farmer in the original version) to tell the story of Felix Salten’s classic, drawing from recordings of deer, rabbits, ospreys, and other forest inhabitants in the 50,000-hectare Orleans forest in the Centre-Val de Loire region.

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]]><![CDATA[‘What went wrong? Everything!’: 30 years of ‘Street Fighter,’ which almost went off the rails due to Van Damme’s erratic behavior]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-01-05/what-went-wrong-everything-30-years-of-street-fighter-which-almost-went-off-the-rails-due-to-van-dammes-erratic-behavior.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2025-01-05/what-went-wrong-everything-30-years-of-street-fighter-which-almost-went-off-the-rails-due-to-van-dammes-erratic-behavior.htmlSun, 05 Jan 2025 04:00:00 +0000With Sonic the Hedgehog 3 besting all competition at the box office — including Disney’s Christmas blockbuster Mufasa: The Lion King, no less — it’s boom times for the never-very-well-received video game-based film. Last year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie became the biggest commercial success in the history of such adaptations, while Five Nights at Freddy’s, based on the independent series of the same name, turned into another phenomenon. Granted, none were greeted with much enthusiasm from critics, besides the acclaimed The Last of Us. The explanation for their financial success may come down to demographics and a public made up of dedicated players that impacts the way these cinematic versions are articulated in the era of fan service. We have seen a character’s design changed at the last minute to please fans, as happened with the first Sonic (2020), as well as a game’s aesthetic wielded as an end in itself, even when a film’s narrative suffers from an overreliance on references to the original product.

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]]>Cordon Press,Cordon Press<![CDATA[Ridley Scott’s dizzying career at 87: Big hits, epic flops and multimillion-dollar budgets]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-12-05/ridley-scotts-dizzying-career-at-87-big-hits-epic-flops-and-multimillion-dollar-budgets.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-12-05/ridley-scotts-dizzying-career-at-87-big-hits-epic-flops-and-multimillion-dollar-budgets.htmlThu, 05 Dec 2024 18:52:56 +0000At 87, with the box office success of Gladiator II added to his legendary career, Ridley Scott is in a position to speak his mind. Like Clint Eastwood, who at 94 has just released another movie Juror No. 2, Scott has made it clear that he will keep directing as long as he’s able. During his latest promotional tour, he couldn’t resist poking fun at Quentin Tarantino’s retirement plans, urging the 61-year-old director to “shut up and go make another movie.”

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]]>Karwai Tang<![CDATA[From a Jesus Christ sensei to Muslim converts: Inside the strange new wave of Christian cinema ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-18/from-a-jesus-christ-sensei-to-muslim-converts-inside-the-strange-new-wave-of-ultra-catholic-cinema.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-18/from-a-jesus-christ-sensei-to-muslim-converts-inside-the-strange-new-wave-of-ultra-catholic-cinema.htmlMon, 18 Nov 2024 17:49:57 +0000The year is 29 AD. A Viking called Oren seeks a fresh start in Nazareth by breaking into the world of mixed martial arts. His journey takes a pivotal turn when he encounters the perfect trainer. And that trainer is none other than... Jesus Christ. This is the premise of The Carpenter, a film that brings together professional fighters, martial arts, and parkour, all set to a soundtrack featuring metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Drowning Pool. While it might initially evoke the spirit of parody films like Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001), The Carpenter is not a comedy. “I fell in love with the premise right away, asking the question so many of us have asked: ‘What was Jesus’ life like in the years leading up to His ministry?’” said director Garrett Batty, who released Faith of Angels, another Christian-themed film with a more restrained tone, this year.

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]]>Collage: Blanca López / Getty Images<![CDATA[Danny DeVito’s final revenge: Hollywood’s ‘funny short guy’ gets the last laugh at age 80]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-18/danny-devitos-final-revenge-hollywoods-funny-short-guy-gets-the-last-laugh-at-age-80.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-18/danny-devitos-final-revenge-hollywoods-funny-short-guy-gets-the-last-laugh-at-age-80.htmlMon, 18 Nov 2024 13:51:51 +0000The first episode of Taxi (1978), the series that earned Danny DeVito an Emmy and a Golden Globe, was based on a visual gag: the despotic and belligerent cab dispatcher who first appeared on screens shouting and imposing himself on everyone came out of his cabin halfway through the episode, and turned out to be 4 ft 10 in. At the time, the visual trick worked because DeVito was still unknown to viewers. Now the New Jersey-born comedian, who turned 80 on Sunday, is not only one of the most popular faces in Hollywood but also one of the most beloved actors by audiences of different generations thanks to his continued success over the decades. And with his stature as an inseparable element of his stellar image.

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]]>ABC Photo Archives<![CDATA[Abducted in front of 23 witnesses and a UN secretary-general: The most famous UFO file is resurrected on Netflix]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-07/abducted-in-front-of-23-witnesses-and-a-un-secretary-general-the-most-famous-ufo-file-is-resurrected-on-netflix.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-11-07/abducted-in-front-of-23-witnesses-and-a-un-secretary-general-the-most-famous-ufo-file-is-resurrected-on-netflix.htmlThu, 07 Nov 2024 14:26:31 +0000Many of the reported cases of alleged alien encounters, flying saucers, or abductions take place in remote locations, far from the eyes and cameras of almost anyone, or in conditions that make it difficult to see anything clearly. For those who fabricate such experiences, it is a necessary alibi. The case of New Yorker Linda Napolitano, a housewife of Italian descent who said she was abducted by aliens in 1989, generated huge media coverage for exactly the opposite reason: she claimed that a UFO had taken her from her bedroom by means of a tractor beam in the early hours of the morning, in the middle of Manhattan.

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]]>General<![CDATA[The Jesus and Mary Chain, the brothers who hated each other before Oasis]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-21/the-jesus-and-mary-chain-the-brothers-who-hated-each-other-before-oasis.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-21/the-jesus-and-mary-chain-the-brothers-who-hated-each-other-before-oasis.htmlMon, 21 Oct 2024 18:28:51 +0000With a knack for arriving either too early or too late, the Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain picked up the pieces of post-punk in the 1980s. Influencing a handful of bands, they were eventually swept away by the alternative rock boom a decade later. Groups like the Pixies and Sonic Youth, who admired them, managed to define an era with a similar noisy yet melodic formula, while their own record label, Warner, largely scorned their contributions.

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]]>Michael Putland<![CDATA[Megan Fox: ‘The Hollywood of my time was a misogynistic hell’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-05/megan-fox-the-hollywood-of-my-time-was-a-misogynistic-hell.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-05/megan-fox-the-hollywood-of-my-time-was-a-misogynistic-hell.htmlSat, 05 Oct 2024 04:05:00 +0000One of the most successful horror films of recent times was M3GAN (2022), the story of an artificial intelligence in the form of a children’s doll that developed homicidal tendencies. It’s not hard to imagine someone in an office thinking it would be funny to exploit the movie’s title to cast Megan Fox, 38, as the robot M3GAN. On September 13, Subservience was released in U.S. theaters, a science fiction thriller with erotic overtones where the actress who rose to fame for Transformers (2007) plays a cyborg nanny, acquired by a father to temporarily replace his hospitalized wife and take care of the housework. As is easy to guess, the situation soon escalates into a The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992) scenario, with the robot trying to take control of the family and the husband’s affection at all costs.

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]]>Scott Dudelson<![CDATA[When Francis Ford Coppola made a Soviet sex monster film: The B-movie beginnings of the maker of ‘The Godfather’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-03/when-francis-ford-coppola-made-a-soviet-sex-monster-film-the-b-movie-beginnings-of-the-maker-of-the-godfather.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-10-03/when-francis-ford-coppola-made-a-soviet-sex-monster-film-the-b-movie-beginnings-of-the-maker-of-the-godfather.htmlThu, 03 Oct 2024 11:58:20 +0000Ever since Megalopolis was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May, one of the most talked-about eccentricities involving the latest film by the 85-year-old Francis Ford Coppola is the scene where the main character, Adam Driver, speaks directly to the movie audience. The breakdown of the fourth wall simulates a news conference: the lights go on and, in front of a microphone, a real person stands up to ask a question.

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]]>Bettmann<![CDATA[‘You want to play like him? You’ll break your hand’: 20 years on since the death of Johnny Ramone, the guitarist who changed rock]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-09-16/you-want-to-play-like-him-youll-break-your-hand-20-years-on-since-the-death-of-johnny-ramone-the-guitarist-who-changed-rock.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-09-16/you-want-to-play-like-him-youll-break-your-hand-20-years-on-since-the-death-of-johnny-ramone-the-guitarist-who-changed-rock.htmlMon, 16 Sep 2024 17:19:58 +0000The second-most popular legend about guitarist Johnny Ramone — born John William Cummings — is that he represents the KKK in the band’s famous song The KKK Took My Baby Away. The theory — spread by the Ramones’ manager in the documentary End of the Century (2003) — centers on a drama that hit the band in the early 1980s, when Linda Daniele left her boyfriend, the vocalist Joey, to marry Johnny.

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]]>Michael Ochs Archives<![CDATA[‘It’s more disturbing than many horror movies’: How ‘Shaun of the Dead’ showed we’re zombies of capitalism]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-09-15/its-more-disturbing-than-many-horror-movies-how-shaun-of-the-dead-showed-were-zombies-of-capitalism.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-09-15/its-more-disturbing-than-many-horror-movies-how-shaun-of-the-dead-showed-were-zombies-of-capitalism.htmlSun, 15 Sep 2024 04:00:00 +0000If George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) reflected the racial tensions and distrust in institutions of late-1960s America, films like 28 Days Later (2002) and Dawn of the Dead (2004) drew on the documentary aesthetics of modern horrors to speak of the fragility of modern life and the speed at which a seemingly stable social order could crumble. In this context, the British comedy Shaun of the Dead — released in April 2004 in the United Kingdom and internationally in the autumn of that same year — became one of the most important films of the subgenre by proposing another twist: what if comfort and the dominant social order are already, at their base, deeply zombified?

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]]>photo: MPTV.net<![CDATA[The mysteries surrounding the Manson Family murders, more than half-a-century later: ‘I believe what I’m told to believe, don’t you?’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/usa/2024-08-24/the-mysteries-surrounding-the-manson-family-murders-more-than-half-a-century-later-i-believe-what-im-told-to-believe-dont-you.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/usa/2024-08-24/the-mysteries-surrounding-the-manson-family-murders-more-than-half-a-century-later-i-believe-what-im-told-to-believe-dont-you.htmlSat, 24 Aug 2024 04:05:00 +0000Less than five years had passed since the sentencing of Charles Manson and his criminal sect — the so-called “Manson Family” — when the official version of events was met with notable skepticism.

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]]><![CDATA[Why ‘The Sixth Sense’ was the best and worst thing that could have happened to Shyamalan: ‘Such a powerful final twist left a mark on him’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-08-08/why-the-sixth-sense-was-the-best-and-worst-thing-that-could-have-happened-to-shyamalan-such-a-powerful-final-twist-left-a-mark-on-him.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-08-08/why-the-sixth-sense-was-the-best-and-worst-thing-that-could-have-happened-to-shyamalan-such-a-powerful-final-twist-left-a-mark-on-him.htmlThu, 08 Aug 2024 19:57:32 +0000Few financial disasters have been as profitable for Disney as the unfinished Broadway Brawler (1997), a hockey-themed romantic comedy that imploded after 20 days, after burning through $17 million. Its star and producer, Bruce Willis, decided that no one was doing their job properly and fired half the crew, including the director. According to some sources, his faith in the project was definitively shaken when Bunny Parker — his longtime trusted hairstylist — left the movie to work on The Horse Whisperer (1998). Filming never resumed, and Disney threatened to take the star to court. They finally agreed that Willis would act in three films at a reduced fee to compensate the studio. The movies were Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Kid (2000), which together grossed more than $1.3 billion.

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]]><![CDATA[‘A bad roommate is like a toxic partner’: When sharing an apartment becomes a nightmare]]>https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-08-04/a-bad-roommate-is-like-a-toxic-partner-when-sharing-an-apartment-becomes-a-nightmare.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-08-04/a-bad-roommate-is-like-a-toxic-partner-when-sharing-an-apartment-becomes-a-nightmare.htmlSun, 04 Aug 2024 04:05:00 +0000Summer is the peak season for apartment hunting. The holidays offer us the opportunity to slow down and start a new stage in life, or at the very least find the time to get more organized. Many will do so out of obligation, either because work or school is forcing them to move. And some young people, with a mixture of enthusiasm and naivety, will see in emancipation the dream of finally living away from parental control and building an oasis of fun with their friends, with whom they are so in tune, get along so well and have such a wonderful time that, clearly, nothing can go wrong...

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]]>Getty Images / Juan Francisco Fernández (Collage)<![CDATA[‘Speed’: The film that changed action movies 30 years ago]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-07-11/speed-the-film-that-changed-action-movies-30-years-ago.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-07-11/speed-the-film-that-changed-action-movies-30-years-ago.htmlThu, 11 Jul 2024 20:08:22 +0000Before the era of endless franchises, an original film could break through at the box office simply on the virtues of its plot. What in the world of Hollywood scriptwriting is called a high concept: a one-sentence pitch that can be sold to both executives and viewers. In the case of Speed — which was released in the United States on June 10, 1994 — the idea could be summed up as “a bus that explodes if it goes below 50 miles per hour” (or as Homer Simpson put it “the bus that couldn’t slow down”).

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]]><![CDATA[The problem with ‘Inside Out 2:’ Are our emotions at the service of productivity?]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-07-07/the-problem-with-inside-out-2-are-our-emotions-at-the-service-of-productivity.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-07-07/the-problem-with-inside-out-2-are-our-emotions-at-the-service-of-productivity.htmlSun, 07 Jul 2024 04:05:00 +0000Having racked up more than $1 billion in revenue since its release a few weeks ago, Inside Out 2, Pixar’s follow-up to its 2015 hit, is already the best-selling movie of the year. While its first installment focused on the mental landscape of a little girl, Riley, portraying it as a factory in which her emotions (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Fear, which take the form of fantastical creatures) had to work as a team, the second film catches up with the protagonist, now a teenager, a crucial phase in which, in this narrative, new emotions make their appearance: Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, Ennui — this last one, a kind of cross between boredom and apathy. Although the film has proved to be an economic lifeline for the Disney-owned studio after Lightyear (2022) and Elemental (2023) were released to more muted results, critics have not been as enthusiastic about Inside Out 2 as they were about the original, largely due to a copycat plot that provides few surprises.

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]]>NurPhoto<![CDATA[Shark terrorizes the Olympic Games: Why we can’t get enough of sea monster movies ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-29/shark-terrorizes-the-olympic-games-why-we-cant-get-enough-of-sea-monster-movies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-29/shark-terrorizes-the-olympic-games-why-we-cant-get-enough-of-sea-monster-movies.htmlSat, 29 Jun 2024 04:05:00 +0000Debuting in early June on Netflix, the movie Under Paris tells the story of a marine scientist, Sophie (played by the French-Argentinian actress Bérénice Bejo), who loses her entire crew when the shark they are studying, named Lilith, suddenly slaughters them. Years later, the scientist is living in Paris and trying to put that traumatic event behind her, only to have the past come knocking when the chip that has been implanted in Lilith is detected in the river that runs through the French capital — the odds of an ocean-dwelling shark swimming in fresh water be damned. From that moment on, Sophie begins a race against time to hunt down the shark and prevent further carnage from taking place during the 2024 Olympic swimming competition in the Seine.

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]]><![CDATA[Nazi hunter, opera singer and Errol Flynn’s fight coordinator: The extraordinary life of Christopher Lee beyond Count Dracula]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-15/nazi-hunter-opera-singer-and-errol-flynns-fight-coordinator-the-extraordinary-life-of-christopher-lee-beyond-count-dracula.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-15/nazi-hunter-opera-singer-and-errol-flynns-fight-coordinator-the-extraordinary-life-of-christopher-lee-beyond-count-dracula.htmlSat, 15 Jun 2024 04:18:23 +0000When Christopher Lee (1922-2015) was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2009, the performer made it clear how he would like to be remembered. And, above all, how he would like not to be remembered. Asked by a reporter about the roles he was most proud of, Lee mentioned Count Dooku from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002) ahead of Count Dracula, whom he officially played in 10 films. He also alluded to the drama Jinnah (1998), in which he played the founder of Pakistan, the villain Scaramanga from the James Bond installment The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and the character of Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-03), congratulating himself for managing to remain popular among different generations.

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]]>Michael Ochs Archives<![CDATA[Opus Dei funding a Charles Manson record and a Ku Klux Klan couplet: Scandals of the Spanish underground]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-02/opus-dei-funding-a-charles-manson-record-and-a-ku-klux-klan-couplet-scandals-of-the-spanish-underground.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-06-02/opus-dei-funding-a-charles-manson-record-and-a-ku-klux-klan-couplet-scandals-of-the-spanish-underground.htmlSun, 02 Jun 2024 04:19:48 +0000Between 1987 and 1988, the Locas Pasiones section of EL PAÍS’ weekly magazine brought together Spanish public figures who posed in the guise of their favorite historical figures. In this context, photographer Luis Magán met former Spanish prime minister José María Aznar, who was then premier of the regional government of Castilla y León, at the castle of Villafuerte de Esgueva in Valladolid, to photograph him dressed as the medieval knight El Cid. “Aznar got out of the official car already in costume and, according to what Luis Magán himself told me, began to speak to him in verse in the style of the [epic Spanish poem] El Cantar del mio Cid,” says Servando Rocha, director of the publishing house La Felguera and coordinator of the book Una, grande y rara: Diccionario ilustrado de la España alucinante y alucinada (One, Great and Strange: Illustrated Dictionary of Amazing and Amazed Spain), which features a snapshot of Aznar taken during that session as its cover.

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]]>Collage: Blanca López<![CDATA[North Korea working for ‘The Simpsons’? How the world’s most isolated country is secretly involved in Western animation]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-16/north-korea-working-for-the-simpsons-how-the-worlds-most-isolated-country-is-secretly-involved-in-western-animation.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-16/north-korea-working-for-the-simpsons-how-the-worlds-most-isolated-country-is-secretly-involved-in-western-animation.htmlThu, 16 May 2024 18:59:13 +0000In his graphic memoir Pyongyang, Quebec cartoonist Guy Delisle recounts the time he supervised the animation of a series in North Korea. “The SEK [Scientific Educational Korea] studio may have been used at first to educate the masses, but today it serves, above all, to bring foreign currency (mainly French) into the country,” wrote Delisle.

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]]><![CDATA[Mummies, anachronisms and bisexual awakenings: The ‘pivotal blockbuster of the nineties’ that resurrected adventure cinema]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-15/mummies-anachronisms-and-bisexual-awakenings-the-pivotal-blockbuster-of-the-nineties-that-resurrected-adventure-cinema.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-15/mummies-anachronisms-and-bisexual-awakenings-the-pivotal-blockbuster-of-the-nineties-that-resurrected-adventure-cinema.htmlWed, 15 May 2024 20:14:53 +0000“Death, eternal punishment, for anyone who opens this casket.” That’s the inscription on the tomb of Egyptian high priest Imhotep in the 1932 movie The Mummy, and it’s a warning that must have stuck with Universal Pictures. Beyond the 1959 film by British director Terence Fisher, the studio seemed reluctant to bring back one of its most classic monsters, alongside Dracula (1931), Doctor Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933). There were several discussions about doing a remake, with directors such as George A. Romero, Clive Barker or Joe Dante at the helm, but none came to fruition. Until someone proposed a new twist: turning it into an Indiana Jones-style adventure film.

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]]>Frank Trapper<![CDATA[‘Nirvana from the hood’: How The Offspring sold 40 million albums with no one’s help but their own]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-05/nirvana-from-the-hood-how-the-offspring-sold-40-million-albums-with-no-ones-help-but-their-own.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-05-05/nirvana-from-the-hood-how-the-offspring-sold-40-million-albums-with-no-ones-help-but-their-own.htmlSun, 05 May 2024 03:23:26 +0000They were omnipresent on the radio, but the majority of the public had never even seen the members of The Offspring. Their only references: their singer’s high-pitched voice; the accelerated, almost hardcore beat of the group’s songs and its horrendous album cover, which featured the radiography of a skeleton. In December 1994, many got a clearer picture. After having turned down several invitations to play Saturday Night Live and the David Letterman and Conan O’Brien shows over the course of the year, the Orange County band agreed to play the Billboard Music Awards. Led by vocalist Bryan “Dexter” Holland and his incredibly long dreadlocks, the group came out on stage and performed their repertoire’s least television-friendly song, Bad Habit. Underneath his blazer, Holland was wearing a t-shirt that he exposed halfway through the number. It displayed another rebellious message: “Corporate rock kills bands dead.”

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]]>Mick Hutson<![CDATA[What happens when you die on the same day as John Lennon? Artists whose death was overshadowed by another]]>https://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-04-24/what-happens-when-you-die-on-the-same-day-as-john-lennon-artists-whose-death-was-overshadowed-by-another.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/lifestyle/2024-04-24/what-happens-when-you-die-on-the-same-day-as-john-lennon-artists-whose-death-was-overshadowed-by-another.htmlWed, 24 Apr 2024 16:45:37 +0000In the universe of rock fans — a place where the things that matter are being authentic, knowing more songs than anyone else, being more of a purist, and boasting about knowing a band from its beginnings, since “before they became commercial” — few events stir up the hornet’s nest more than the death of a great star. There’s the type who exaggerates his closeness to the deceased and overacts his sadness; then we have the type who claims to have always been passionate about the dearly departed’s music, even if he had never mentioned it before; finally, there is no shortage of individuals who accuse the rest of being upstarts. But there is also the fan who humbly approaches from a place of genuine curiosity, to discover the legacy of this incredibly relevant musician whose music he never had the opportunity to listen to. Looking at the bright side, this is the good part about an artist’s death: their work gets disseminated, their songs (or excerpts from their books, or scenes from their films) are shared as a tribute, attention is renewed, and sometimes they end up being more popular in death than in life.

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]]>Getty Images / Blanca López (Collage)<![CDATA[The child stars’ house of terror: ‘If everyone knew, who could we turn to?’]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-19/the-child-stars-house-of-terror-if-everyone-knew-who-could-we-turn-to.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-19/the-child-stars-house-of-terror-if-everyone-knew-who-could-we-turn-to.htmlFri, 19 Apr 2024 13:20:01 +0000When the #MeToo movement gathered momentum in 2017 and Hollywood heavyweight Harvey Weinstein was pulled off his pedestal, there was a domino effect in the industry that ended the careers of powerful figures previously considered untouchable. This was not confined to the big screen. It also happened in television. With the sketch series All That (1994) for the children’s channel Nickelodeon, producer, screenwriter and actor Dan Schneider became a key player in kids TV, pursuing ambitions to build a miniature Hollywood, with its own pre-teen stars, its own awards ceremony — the Kids’ Choice Awards — and a wide range of entertainment.

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]]>Jason Merritt<![CDATA[The case of Scott Adkins, ‘the last true action hero’ you have never seen in movie theaters]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-04/the-case-of-scott-adkins-the-last-true-action-hero-you-have-never-seen-in-movie-theaters.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-04-04/the-case-of-scott-adkins-the-last-true-action-hero-you-have-never-seen-in-movie-theaters.htmlThu, 04 Apr 2024 17:49:52 +0000A rich man enters a dojo to convince the master who runs it to transfer the school to him. Nobody uses the master’s traditional style of martial arts anymore, he explains while stepping on the tatami in his street shoes. The teacher advises the him to leave, but, instead the rich man mocks him and invites the master to hit him “like in fucking kung-fu movies.” And the two interlocutors have more than words.

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]]>Axelle/Bauer-Griffin<![CDATA[What if ‘Groundhog Day’ talks about all of us? An investigation into the most famous time loop in cinema]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-30/what-if-groundhog-day-talks-about-all-of-us-an-investigation-into-the-most-famous-time-loop-in-cinema.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-30/what-if-groundhog-day-talks-about-all-of-us-an-investigation-into-the-most-famous-time-loop-in-cinema.htmlSat, 30 Mar 2024 14:30:00 +0000What does “Groundhog Day” mean to you? If the phrase automatically leads you to think about the same day repeating itself over and over again, it is thanks to the 1993 movie of the same name, which is one of the most influential comedies of recent decades.

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]]>Archive Photos<![CDATA[How ‘a simple movie about a guy who throws punches’ became an unexpected classic]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-26/how-a-simple-movie-about-a-guy-who-throws-punches-became-an-unexpected-classic.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-03-26/how-a-simple-movie-about-a-guy-who-throws-punches-became-an-unexpected-classic.htmlTue, 26 Mar 2024 19:08:30 +0000Last Thursday, Amazon Prime Video saw the arrival of Road House, a new version of the 1989 film by the same name, this time with Jake Gyllenhaal in the leading role and filmmaker Doug Liman behind the camera. This remake keeps the original’s title, a similar plot and its focus on action sequences, but there are some clear differences: the fights are bigger, the settings more spectacular, UFC champion Conor McGregor was recruited to play the boss villain and production values, bolstered by an $85 million budget and Hollywood A-listers, are clearly much higher. An ambitious project, and one that counts with diverse resources with which to satisfy many of the expectations of fans of the 1985 version, which was more modest and had less pretensions, but which, after an acceptable showing at the box office, became a legend amid VHS rental stores and late night reruns. It was the kind of classic that was made possible by its willingness to pull out all the stops.

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]]>Rights Managed<![CDATA[‘My plan was not to join Hollywood. It was to destroy it’: How Jim Carrey triumphed through anarchy ]]>https://english.elpais.com/people/2024-02-29/my-plan-was-not-to-join-hollywood-it-was-to-destroy-it-how-jim-carrey-triumphed-through-anarchy.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/people/2024-02-29/my-plan-was-not-to-join-hollywood-it-was-to-destroy-it-how-jim-carrey-triumphed-through-anarchy.htmlThu, 29 Feb 2024 19:29:33 +0000Sean Connery decided his final film would be The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003). Gene Hackman bid adieu with the lackluster Welcome to Mooseport (2004). And two years ago, Jim Carrey (Ontario, Canada, 62 years old) purported that he would become a member of this club of legends who ended their careers on an anticlimactic note when, the day before the premiere of Sonic 2: The Movie in April 2022, he surprised the world with the news that he was retiring. “I have enough. I’ve done enough. I am enough,” he said in an interview with Access Hollywood. “I’m being fairly serious. I really like my quiet life and I really like putting paint on canvas and I really love my spiritual life.” Nonetheless, the comedian left the door open to a comeback: “If the angels bring some sort of script that’s written in gold ink that says to me that it’s going to be really important for people to see, I might continue down the road.” Just a few weeks ago, that project capable of bringing Carrey out of his exile arrived: it has been announced he will appear in Sonic 3.

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]]>Rich Fury<![CDATA[Black, gay and the true king of rock and roll: This is how Little Richard set the tone for popular music ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/black-gay-and-the-true-king-of-rock-and-roll-this-is-how-little-richard-set-the-tone-for-popular-music.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/black-gay-and-the-true-king-of-rock-and-roll-this-is-how-little-richard-set-the-tone-for-popular-music.htmlMon, 29 Jan 2024 23:19:32 +0000Mick Jagger slept on the floor of his room, Paul McCartney took lessons to scream like him, and Elvis Presley recognized him as the true king of rock and roll. However, Little Richard never reached the huge commercial and popular magnitude of his most famous pupils. “You should all be fighting to make me an album. The greatest singers that ever lived have been with me, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, the Beatles, Mick Jagger... Mick, you remember that?” he said jokingly, but very seriously, before the industry’s top brass in 1989, on the occasion of Otis Redding’s inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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]]>Michael Ochs Archives<![CDATA[‘I should not have written ‘A Clockwork Orange’’: How Anthony Burgess came to disown his own novel]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/i-should-not-have-written-a-clockwork-orange-how-anthony-burgess-came-to-disown-his-own-novel.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-29/i-should-not-have-written-a-clockwork-orange-how-anthony-burgess-came-to-disown-his-own-novel.htmlMon, 29 Jan 2024 08:00:00 +0000British author Anthony Burgess was inspired to write his best-known novel, A Clockwork Orange (1962), by the uncivil drift that he perceived among the youth of his time. That is why, a decade later, when headlines in the vein of “Police hunt the Clockwork Orange rapist gang” or “Child dies in Clockwork Orange war” started to appear in the press, he could not help but feel that something had gone tremendously wrong.

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]]>Michel SETBOUN<![CDATA[‘A macabre piece of crap’: The Mexican film that narrated the tragedy of the Andes plane crash for the first time ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-13/a-macabre-piece-of-crap-this-is-the-mexican-film-that-narrated-the-tragedy-of-the-andes-plane-crash-for-the-first-time.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2024-01-13/a-macabre-piece-of-crap-this-is-the-mexican-film-that-narrated-the-tragedy-of-the-andes-plane-crash-for-the-first-time.htmlSat, 13 Jan 2024 17:58:40 +0000The story of the Andes tragedy of 1972 — when a Uruguayan Air Force plane crashed in the mountain range — continues to have an impact 50 years later. Of the 45 people who were on board, 16 of them — presumed dead — managed to survive in extreme conditions for more than two months. Its latest movie adaptation — Society of the Snow — has been Netflix’s most-viewed film worldwide since it premiered on the platform this past January 4.

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]]>Courtesy Everett Collection<![CDATA[Drugs meet aliens: 25 years after the release of ‘The Faculty,’ when the fever for teenage horror made the leap to science fiction ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-28/drugs-meet-aliens-25-years-after-the-release-of-the-faculty-when-the-fever-for-teenage-horror-made-the-leap-to-science-fiction.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-28/drugs-meet-aliens-25-years-after-the-release-of-the-faculty-when-the-fever-for-teenage-horror-made-the-leap-to-science-fiction.htmlThu, 28 Dec 2023 15:32:38 +0000Few films take less time to contextualize themselves than The Faculty. It was released in the United States 25 years ago, on Christmas Day in 1998. Its opening seconds — with the song The Kids Aren’t Alright by The Offspring — clearly indicate the era of the production.

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]]>Robin Platzer/Twin Images<![CDATA[A bloody Santa Claus with an ax: These are the films that slash Christmas clichés ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-19/a-bloody-santa-claus-with-an-ax-these-are-the-films-that-slash-christmas-cliches.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-19/a-bloody-santa-claus-with-an-ax-these-are-the-films-that-slash-christmas-cliches.htmlTue, 19 Dec 2023 15:12:53 +0000In November 1984, various groups of protesters gathered at the doors of the theaters where the horror film Silent Night, Deadly Night was being shown, armed with Christmas carols and banners reading “Save Santa Claus” and “We Love Santa Claus.” The movie in question revolved around a five-year-old boy who witnesses a thief dressed as Santa Claus raping his mother and killing both his parents, a trauma that turns him into a homicidal, psychopathic adult that characterizes himself as a killer Santa Claus. The poster of the movie showed the arm of the jolly gift deliverer, clad in his characteristic red coat, sticking out of a chimney and brandishing an axe.

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]]><![CDATA[‘A colossal jerk has died’: when celebrity obituaries are not kind]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-06/a-colossal-jerk-has-died-when-celebrity-obituaries-are-not-kind.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-12-06/a-colossal-jerk-has-died-when-celebrity-obituaries-are-not-kind.htmlWed, 06 Dec 2023 22:54:05 +0000Henry Kissinger, former U.S. Secretary of State under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and a widely documented instigator of human rights violations in Latin America and Asia, died last week at the age of 100. Journalist Spencer Ackerman, author of his obituary in Rolling Stone, will not miss him. “Henry Kissinger, war criminal loved by the American ruling class, finally dies” was the headline with which Ackerman dispatched the politician. In the very first paragraph, just in case there was still someone waiting for a laudatory comment in the text, the author recalled the figure of the white supremacist Timothy McVeigh, the murderer with the highest number of confirmed deaths (168 people, including 19 children) executed by United States, to then point out: “McVeigh never remotely killed anywhere on the scale of Kissinger.”

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]]>Getty / Pepa Ortiz (Collage)<![CDATA[The umpteenth resurrection of Godzilla, the radioactive monster of Japanese origin ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-11-20/the-umpteenth-resurrection-of-godzilla-the-radioactive-monster-of-japanese-origin.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-11-20/the-umpteenth-resurrection-of-godzilla-the-radioactive-monster-of-japanese-origin.htmlMon, 20 Nov 2023 16:58:31 +0000In the same year that Oppenheimer achieved notable box office success and renewed public interest in the story of the atomic bomb, Godzilla roared again from Japan. While the Christopher Nolan film still doesn’t have a release date in Japan — given the controversial fact that the film only offers the perspective of the aggressor in the 1945 American nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed more than 220,000 people — Toho Studios has brought back its emblematic figure. The reptilian creature gave face and form to national trauma in Japan after the end of World War II, when the first film in the series was released in 1954. Set just a couple of years after the nuclear attacks, Godzilla Minus One — the 37th film in the saga — has already become a massive box office success in Japan. It is scheduled for release in North America and Europe on December 1, 2023.

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]]>Chris McGrath<![CDATA[A ‘brilliant’ album and a fatal accident: The Exploding Hearts, the great band that could not be ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-02/a-brilliant-album-and-a-fatal-accident-the-exploding-hearts-the-great-band-that-could-not-be.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-10-02/a-brilliant-album-and-a-fatal-accident-the-exploding-hearts-the-great-band-that-could-not-be.htmlMon, 02 Oct 2023 03:14:00 +0000They had everything to carve out a place among the bands that brought about the commercial resurrection of rock at the beginning of the millennium. Their intense live performance had caught the attention of punk classics like The Adicts and Buzzcocks, who quickly recruited them as opening acts. They had stage presence, a great look and an infectious joy. And the most compelling argument: Guitar Romantic (2003), their debut album, was a collection of ten songs – almost all of them with single potential – that, in less than 30 minutes, brought power pop and the garage revival of figures like The Undertones, New York Dolls or Nick Lowe to the present, albeit with more credibility than that of a simple retro exercise.

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]]><![CDATA[Craig Gillespie and the virtual fraud that shocked the world: ‘Many thought they were playing in the same conditions as Wall Street, and that’s not the case’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-20/craig-gillespie-and-the-virtual-fraud-that-shocked-the-world-many-thought-they-were-playing-in-the-same-conditions-as-wall-street-and-thats-not-the-case.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-09-20/craig-gillespie-and-the-virtual-fraud-that-shocked-the-world-many-thought-they-were-playing-in-the-same-conditions-as-wall-street-and-thats-not-the-case.htmlWed, 20 Sep 2023 19:53:58 +0000The name might not ring a bell to you, but it would be hard to find a person who has never seen a film by Craig Gillespie, an Australian filmmaker that always delivers more than expected. He contributed to the modern wave of live-action Disney titles with an above-average movie — Cruella (2021), whose sequel is already in the works —, did one of the best remakes of a 1980s horror classic to date — Fright Night (2011) —, and proved that he was capable of doing one of those biopics that the Academy likes so much, I, Tonya (2017), with more style and skill than other flicks whose lifespan does not go beyond the awards season.

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]]>Getty Images / Collage: Pepa Ortiz <![CDATA[Urban renewal in New York designed for longer life ]]>https://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-09-10/urban-renewal-in-new-york-designed-for-longer-life.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/usa/2023-09-10/urban-renewal-in-new-york-designed-for-longer-life.htmlSun, 10 Sep 2023 22:11:12 +0000The word alafia, in the language of the Yoruba (a West African ethnic group in parts of Nigeria, Benin and Togo), is associated with peace, well-being and good health. These are the goals of the Alafia housing project in one of the most marginalized parts of Brooklyn. In that area, around 30% of the population, mostly Black and Hispanic, live below the poverty line. The life expectancy of the people who live there is 78, three years lower than the average. These numbers are why the area was chosen for an experiment that hopes to improve the life expectancy of underserved citizens through a $1.2 billion state-funded urban renewal project. “Alafia is part of the Vital Brooklyn Initiative, which aims to connect housing with personal balance, well-being, employment, physical and social health support, and cultural and community spaces,” said Daniel Heuberger, a principal at Dattner Architects. The architecture firm is in charge of designing the 2,400-home complex on a 57-acre site, in collaboration with SCAPE, a landscape design company.

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]]><![CDATA[The ordeal and salvation of Tim Armstrong, ‘the Bob Dylan of punk’ went into rehab to form Rancid: ‘It was like a Rocky movie’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-22/the-ordeal-and-salvation-of-tim-armstrong-the-bob-dylan-of-punk-went-into-rehab-to-form-rancid-it-was-like-a-rocky-movie.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-22/the-ordeal-and-salvation-of-tim-armstrong-the-bob-dylan-of-punk-went-into-rehab-to-form-rancid-it-was-like-a-rocky-movie.htmlTue, 22 Aug 2023 09:30:00 +0000These are good times for nostalgic nineties punk fans. As NOFX (bidding farewell) and Blink-182 (returning) are once again packing out venues, while Green Day have been completing their tour and album, Rancid joined the party in June with Tomorrow never comes. This is their first album in six years and it has been backed by stellar reviews and an international tour. This was not the only delight this year for fans of Tim Armstrong (Albany, California, 57 years old). April brought the surprise release of Raid, the debut song from a new group called Doom Regulator for which Armstrong has teamed up with Jesse Michaels, a bandmate going back 34 years in the short-lived, yet legendary Operation Ivy. This was a closing of the circle both belated and cathartic for a special artist, who Brett Gurewitz of Bad Religion called “the Bob Dylan of punk,” who transformed his personal redemption into an artistic undertaking.

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]]>Bob Berg<![CDATA[‘Blue Beetle,’ the superhero movie that nobody expects to succeed (even if the critics like it) ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-18/blue-beetle-the-superhero-movie-that-nobody-expects-to-succeed-even-if-the-critics-like-it.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-18/blue-beetle-the-superhero-movie-that-nobody-expects-to-succeed-even-if-the-critics-like-it.htmlFri, 18 Aug 2023 18:29:51 +0000The Blue Beetle is not one of DC’s most famous characters, and it is not clear if its popularity will particularly grow after its recently released film adaptation, as has been the case of other superheroes. Not that there’s a problem with the movie itself: it is a proper enough origin story, with a solid lead actor (Xolo Maridueña, star of Cobra Kai) which embraces the Mexican background of the hero in a fun, entertaining way. Blue Beetle, however, arrives in theaters after a tepid advertising campaign, not very typical of a production with an estimated budget of $120 million; without a doubt, it is a far cry from the mobilization we witnessed just a couple of months ago with The Flash, Warner’s previous superhero film.

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]]>Warner Bros<![CDATA[From Beatles lawsuits to the Take That hotline: How band break-ups have traumatized their fans]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-16/from-beatles-lawsuits-to-the-take-that-hotline-how-band-break-ups-have-traumatized-their-fans.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-08-16/from-beatles-lawsuits-to-the-take-that-hotline-how-band-break-ups-have-traumatized-their-fans.htmlWed, 16 Aug 2023 15:29:07 +0000In an episode of the animated adult series Metalocalypse (2006), based on the fictional death metal band Dethklok, a newsreel reported a mass suicide of fans after the group, for the umpteenth time, postponed the release of their new album. In another episode, hundreds of fans traveled to the Arctic Circle to witness a one-song gig having signed a waiver of liability for their possible death during the show. This is a parody of the world of heavy metal and of the most radical fans. However, the most dedicated followers can be found in higher concentrations in communities of teenagers who are more fascinated by the boy band of the moment than the worshipers of any satanic group or those devoted to Viking nostalgia. At least, when it comes to extreme reactions to a band definitively hanging up their guitars, microphone or keyboard with playback button.

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]]>Hartmut Reeh<![CDATA[Excessive muscles, padded butts and other unattainable standards: How the ‘Wonderbra culture’ now affects men]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2023-07-31/excessive-muscles-padded-butts-and-other-unattainable-standards-how-the-wonderbra-culture-now-affects-men.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2023-07-31/excessive-muscles-padded-butts-and-other-unattainable-standards-how-the-wonderbra-culture-now-affects-men.htmlMon, 31 Jul 2023 16:17:58 +0000“On my way to work last week, I found myself surrounded by a multitude of hunks, shirtless, running, all with smooth, hairless chests. They had extraordinarily toned muscles and every contour was extremely tanned. I felt like a misplaced extra on the set of Avengers: Infinity War,” journalist Jo Ellison recounted in June in her The Marvelification of Man column in The Financial Times, which asked: “When did everyone start looking like Chris Hemsworth?” While the comparison with the man who plays Thor may be generous to almost all men, at least, the change produced in recent years with respect to the male fixation on appearance and physical form is easily noticeable.

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]]><![CDATA[A brainless American flick, turned into a work of art: 25 years after its release, ‘Armageddon’ still fascinates the public ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-22/a-brainless-american-flick-turned-into-a-work-of-art-25-years-after-its-release-armageddon-still-fascinates-the-public.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-22/a-brainless-american-flick-turned-into-a-work-of-art-25-years-after-its-release-armageddon-still-fascinates-the-public.htmlSat, 22 Jul 2023 22:07:00 +0000The highest-grossing film of 1998 begins with a voiceover by Charlton Heston, who recalls the extinction of the dinosaurs and warns about the possibility of another lethal meteorite hitting Earth.

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]]>IFA Film<![CDATA[Tommy Cash, the Estonian rapper revolutionizing the runway with his eccentric costumes ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-08/tommy-cash-the-estonian-rapper-revolutionizing-the-runway-with-his-eccentric-costumes.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-07-08/tommy-cash-the-estonian-rapper-revolutionizing-the-runway-with-his-eccentric-costumes.htmlSat, 08 Jul 2023 22:15:00 +0000This week in Paris, the designer Jean Paul Gaultier presented his latest collection of haute couture for the fall and winter seasons, in a fashion show featuring Julien Dossena, creative director at Rabanne, as a guest designer. While Gaultier’s 33 looks, inspired by 33 Parisian monuments and sites, strutted down the runway, in the front row of the audience, a spectator easily mistaken for a Sacha Baron Cohen character watched the event in a flesh-colored, muscularly shaped tuxedo designed by Jiawei Han — a trompe l’oeil of a nude body builder (pale-flesh jacket and pants with white shirt and black tie underneath). The muscular man in the audience was doing exercises, stretched, and periodically eating spoonfuls of protein powder from a large container. Despite the best efforts of the woman on his right to contain her laughter, and despite the haste with which the influencer Emma Chamberlain could be seen rejecting his offer to join him in gulping down the powdered bodybuilding supplement, the man’s presence, and performance, were far from a surprise: everyone expected the Estonian rapper turned fashion provocateur Tommy Cash (Tallinn, 31 years old), by now a well-known eccentricity in the fashion world, to cause some kind of a scandal.

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]]>Pierre Suu<![CDATA[‘Pinkwashing is on its way to becoming a brave gesture’: When the harassment of Zara and Bud Light campaigns puts brands in jeopardy]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2023-07-03/pinkwashing-is-on-its-way-to-becoming-a-brave-gesture-when-the-harassment-of-zara-and-bud-light-campaigns-puts-brands-in-jeopardy.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2023-07-03/pinkwashing-is-on-its-way-to-becoming-a-brave-gesture-when-the-harassment-of-zara-and-bud-light-campaigns-puts-brands-in-jeopardy.htmlMon, 03 Jul 2023 19:44:56 +0000With a brief animation showing different balloons in the colors of the rainbow that, at the end, form the words ‘Love and Pride,’ Zara congratulated the LGBTQI+ community on the occasion of its international day on Instagram on June 28. An innocuous post at best, with no message, no protest, or representational component that could challenge anyone, was quickly overwhelmed by a cataract of angry reactions, illustrating how, these days, no show of support for the cause is seen as superficial. “Show respect for your customers. We are not obliged to support this movement,” wrote one user, accompanied by dozens of messages announcing that they were no longer following the brand (vomit emojis included), and religious invocations: “The rainbow is God’s promise not to flood the Earth again, stop selling it as something different from what it really means.” ICON has contacted Zara but has not received a response.

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]]>Quintina Valero<![CDATA[What would Karl Marx have thought about today’s video games?]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-28/what-would-karl-marx-have-thought-about-todays-video-games.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-28/what-would-karl-marx-have-thought-about-todays-video-games.htmlFri, 28 Apr 2023 22:21:25 +0000In the video game Little Big Workshop (2019), you are the manager of a factory and your mission is to maximize its levels of efficiency. Its characters exist only to be exploited; when they work too much, they fall to the ground, exhausted, as their colleagues dodge them and continue with their tasks. After discovering this game, Antonio Flores Ledesma, from the Spanish province of Badajoz, asked himself the obvious question: what would Karl Marx say?

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]]><![CDATA[Breaking the algorithm: Why are some tweeters watching 100-year-old movies? ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-19/breaking-the-algorithm-why-are-some-tweeters-watching-100-year-old-movies.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-19/breaking-the-algorithm-why-are-some-tweeters-watching-100-year-old-movies.htmlWed, 19 Apr 2023 16:29:22 +0000Twitter has changed — that’s no big news. There’s now a “For You” tab that shows users tweets from people they don’t follow, and even from people they’ve already blocked (thank you, Twitter algorithms). If you are remotely connected to any movie lovers, perhaps you’ve seen a retweet about some very old films, or people chatting about the conventions of film narration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Or maybe even some memes of The Arrival of a Train (1896), by the Lumière brothers.

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]]><![CDATA[From bears on drugs to giant black sharks: This is how B-movies have gone mainstream ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-07/from-bears-on-drugs-to-giant-black-sharks-this-is-how-b-movies-have-gone-mainstream.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-04-07/from-bears-on-drugs-to-giant-black-sharks-this-is-how-b-movies-have-gone-mainstream.htmlFri, 07 Apr 2023 01:05:58 +0000It could be the premise of a cheap 1980s movie for insomniacs: a bear consumes huge amounts of cocaine and wreaks havoc in a forest reserve. For an hour and a half, guards, hikers and drug traffickers in search of loot lose arms and legs to the ferocious attacks of the overexcited beast. Cocaine Bear, however, is preceded by the Universal logo, had a budget of more than $30 million (making it more expensive than the entire oeuvre of masters of the low-budget flick like Lloyd Kaufman) and is the work of those responsible for the animated Spider-Man and Lego films (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, better known these days as the authors of the 2012 comedy that convinced rapper Kanye West to give up anti-Semitism, 21 Jump Street). Its instant success even made it deserving of a few minutes of glory at the last edition of the Oscars, where Elizabeth Banks announced the award for Best Special Effects accompanied by a person in a bear costume.

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]]><![CDATA[She killed her lover’s wife with 41 axe blows and was acquitted: Candy Montgomery’s story returns to television]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2023-04-01/she-killed-her-lovers-wife-with-41-axe-blows-and-was-acquitted-candy-montgomerys-story-returns-to-television.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2023-04-01/she-killed-her-lovers-wife-with-41-axe-blows-and-was-acquitted-candy-montgomerys-story-returns-to-television.htmlSat, 01 Apr 2023 14:03:21 +0000The facts: at ten o’clock in the morning, on Friday, June 13, 1980, in the city of Wylie, Texas,

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]]><![CDATA[From levitations to evil mothers-in-law: The busy life of an exorcist in 2023 ]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2023-03-25/from-levitations-to-evil-mothers-in-law-the-busy-life-of-an-exorcist-in-2023.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2023-03-25/from-levitations-to-evil-mothers-in-law-the-busy-life-of-an-exorcist-in-2023.htmlSat, 25 Mar 2023 11:54:26 +0000If you want to be an exorcist, you must be willing to be spat on continuously. That is one of the most memorable observations shared by Father Gabriele Amorth (Modena, 1925 - Rome, 2016) in one of the many books he wrote, Father Amorth: My Battle Against Satan, where he summarized, in an interview with journalist Marco Tosatti, everything he learned after the 70,000 victims of possession he claimed to have liberated up to that moment. Officially recognized as an exorcist by the Vatican in 1986, Amorth was the best-known figure of the trade due to his strong presence and his public controversies (among other things, he warned the world that communism, yoga and the Harry Potter saga opened the doors to the evil one). His experiences and writings also served as the basis for the film The Pope’s Exorcist, which will be released on April 5, with Russell Crowe in the role of the Italian priest.

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]]><![CDATA[The nine Hollywood lives of Mel Gibson ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-12-10/the-nine-hollywood-lives-of-mel-gibson.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-12-10/the-nine-hollywood-lives-of-mel-gibson.htmlSat, 10 Dec 2022 01:23:48 +0000While Will Smith timidly returned to public life last week – keeping a low profile and apologizing for the umpteenth time for slapping Chris Rock during the Oscars – Mel Gibson has just released his sixth feature film of 2022. Despite having been accused of abuse and racism on numerous occasions, his career hasn’t slowed down.

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]]>Steve Granitz<![CDATA[Sylvester Stallone: A legend of classic action cinema becomes a modern superhero]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-08-30/sylvester-stallone-a-legend-of-classic-action-cinema-becomes-a-modern-superhero.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-08-30/sylvester-stallone-a-legend-of-classic-action-cinema-becomes-a-modern-superhero.htmlTue, 30 Aug 2022 10:12:51 +0000After a mysterious and solitary garbage man protects a boy from some thugs, the kid starts chasing him to beg him to teach him how to fight like him. This could be the plot of a classic Sylvester Stallone movie, but we are in 2022 and this garbage man is not just any man: the boy actually thinks he could be Samaritan, a superhero who had disappeared 20 years earlier. The movie Samaritan, released on Friday, August 26 on Amazon Prime Video, is the latest attempt by the star of Rocky (1976) to appeal to young audiences in the midst of the Marvel era. It is far from his first one: he is also present in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), playing Stakar in the second installment of Guardians of the Galaxy (2017), as well as the DC Universe, voicing Nanaue the Shark in The Suicide Squad (2016). Also, in the 1990s, before the cinematic superhero boom, he tested the waters with Judge Dredd (1995), one of the great failures of his career at the time.

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]]><![CDATA[‘I stopped making movies in 2011’: Why Eddie Murphy left Hollywood and why he’s come back]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-02-23/i-stopped-making-movies-in-2011-why-eddie-murphy-left-hollywood-and-why-hes-come-back.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-02-23/i-stopped-making-movies-in-2011-why-eddie-murphy-left-hollywood-and-why-hes-come-back.htmlThu, 23 Feb 2023 16:22:41 +0000Eddie Murphy’s acting career deserves recognition. That’s what the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) – the organizer of the Golden Globes – decided when it awarded Murphy the Cecil B. DeMille for “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment” at January’s ceremony. The 61-year-old – who has a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for the musical Dreamgirls (2006) – received the award with surprising solemnity. The seriousness of his speech was only broken at the end when he cracked a joke about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the 2022 Oscars. With the Cecil B. DeMille award, Murphy has confirmed his new status as a respected actor – a recognition that he has earned after being mocked for years about his declining career.

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]]>Axelle/Bauer-Griffin<![CDATA[When a 35-year-old actress is the mother of a 25-year-old: How Hollywood pushes out older women]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-02/when-a-35-year-old-actress-is-the-mother-of-a-25-year-old-how-hollywood-pushes-out-older-women.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-02/when-a-35-year-old-actress-is-the-mother-of-a-25-year-old-how-hollywood-pushes-out-older-women.htmlWed, 02 Mar 2022 03:41:28 +0000“I Iike Emmy Rossum, but why cast a 35-year-old woman to play the mother of a 25-year-old? Why not cast an older actress?” That’s just one of the messages that have been circulating on social media after it was revealed that Rossum would play the mother of Tom Holland, who is just 10 years her junior, in the new Apple TV+ show The Crowded Room. Although Carina Adly Mackenzie, the screenwriter and producer of the show, explained that Rossum’s character would mostly appear in flashbacks, when Holland’s character is a child, the news has reopened the debate about Hollywood’s sexist typecasting of older women. In 2015, a study in Time magazine revealed that while actors reach the peak of their career at age 46, actresses reach this point at age 30.

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]]><![CDATA[Cannibalism returns to film: ‘No one likes to be told that their ancestors ate their neighbors’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-01-01/cannibalism-returns-to-film-no-one-likes-to-be-told-that-their-ancestors-ate-their-neighbors.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2023-01-01/cannibalism-returns-to-film-no-one-likes-to-be-told-that-their-ancestors-ate-their-neighbors.htmlSun, 01 Jan 2023 13:25:35 +0000The 1928 documentary Gow the Head Hunter was the first movie to present cannibalism on screen. Filmed by the explorer Captain Edward A. Salisbury, with photography direction by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (who would create King Kong five years later), the film did not explicitly illustrate the ingestion of human meat, but it did document the preparations and rituals of natives who continued the practice. Starting with that pioneering work, the essayist Antonio José Navarro has traced the history of the figure of the cannibal in film in the book El banquete infame. Representaciones del canibalismo en el cine (or, The infamous banquet. Representations of cannibalism in cinema), which analyzes the phenomenon from the perspective of cultural studies.

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]]>Collage: Blanca López <![CDATA[A Nazi-killing Heidi and a serial-killing Winnie the Pooh: Why have children’s classics become ultra-violent?]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-24/a-nazi-killing-heidi-and-a-serial-killing-winnie-the-pooh-why-have-childrens-classics-become-ultra-violent.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-24/a-nazi-killing-heidi-and-a-serial-killing-winnie-the-pooh-why-have-childrens-classics-become-ultra-violent.htmlThu, 24 Nov 2022 19:00:59 +0000A couple frolic naked in an idyllic spot in the Alps. The woman asks the man to stay a little longer, but he says no: “Goats need love too. They don’t call me Peter the Goatherd for nothing.” The scene, which looks like a porn version of Heidi, is really the introduction to the movie Mad Heidi, a take on the children’s classic with the endearing Alpine orphan now an anti-fascist guerrilla who stands up to the totalitarian Swiss regime that revolves around the cheese monopoly, cheese that Peter is secretly trafficking.

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]]>Collage: Blanca López<<![CDATA[The Blockbuster trap: A love letter to the video store, by the company that destroyed it]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-20/the-blockbuster-trap-the-chain-that-symbolizes-nostalgia-for-the-video-store-was-also-the-one-that-destroyed-it.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-20/the-blockbuster-trap-the-chain-that-symbolizes-nostalgia-for-the-video-store-was-also-the-one-that-destroyed-it.htmlSun, 20 Nov 2022 22:25:30 +0000The cruel irony couldn’t be more obvious: Netflix is profiting off the nostalgia for Blockbuster’s video rental stores. The streaming platform, regarded by some as responsible for the death of the movie rental business model, just premiered a comedy series set in the last remaining Blockbuster in the world. Simply titled Blockbuster, the show is inspired on the true story of the establishment in Bend, Oregon, that in 2019 became the company’s last franchise in the world, a story that previously inspired the documentary The Last Blockbuster (2020), which was the fourth most watched content on Netflix during the spring of 2021 in the United States.

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]]>Barry Iverson<![CDATA[The Kit Connor dilemma: Must we know an actor’s sexuality before they can play a gay role? ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-11/the-kit-connor-dilemma-must-we-know-the-sexuality-of-actors-before-they-can-play-a-gay-role.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-11-11/the-kit-connor-dilemma-must-we-know-the-sexuality-of-actors-before-they-can-play-a-gay-role.htmlFri, 11 Nov 2022 10:50:45 +0000On November 1, Kit Connor tweeted, “I’m bi. congrats for forcing an 18 year old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.” With that, the Londoner, who co-stars in the British Netflix series Heartstopper, ended months of insulting accusations. During that time, some of his followers argued that the fact that he had not publicly come out meant that he was straight, and was just exploiting his sexually ambiguous image.

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]]><![CDATA[The return of Blink-182 after 30 years: UFOs, plane crashes and three Kardashian weddings ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-10-24/the-return-of-blink-182-after-30-years-ufos-plane-crashes-and-three-kardashian-weddings.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-10-24/the-return-of-blink-182-after-30-years-ufos-plane-crashes-and-three-kardashian-weddings.htmlMon, 24 Oct 2022 10:51:25 +0000The truth was out there. After leaving Blink-182 in 2015 to focus on studying UFOs, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge is returning as the frontman of a group that took him to stardom. With DeLonge back, tickets for Blink-182’s new world tour have sold out practically within minutes, despite many fans’ complaints about the price.

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]]>Jeff Kravitz<![CDATA[Peace, love and questionable crypto art: How Ringo Starr keeps controversy at bay ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-09-29/peace-love-and-questionable-crypto-art-how-ringo-starr-keeps-controversy-at-bay.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-09-29/peace-love-and-questionable-crypto-art-how-ringo-starr-keeps-controversy-at-bay.htmlThu, 29 Sep 2022 03:03:41 +0000Ringo Starr has often been dubbed the “luckiest man in the world.” After becoming drummer for The Beatles following Pete Best’s dismissal in 1962, his contribution to the band’s body of work added up to a total of two songs, and his artistic involvement is the subject of an extensive debate that resurfaced last year following the release of the documentary miniseries The Beatles: Get Back, by Peter Jackson, where, throughout the almost nine hours that summarize the sessions that would result in the album Let It Be (1970), he barely says a couple of sentences between the heated arguments of John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

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]]><![CDATA[New docuseries explores Armie Hammer’s life and family: ‘Rape allegations are just the tip of the iceberg’]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-09-03/new-docuseries-explores-armie-hammers-life-and-family-rape-allegations-are-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2022-09-03/new-docuseries-explores-armie-hammers-life-and-family-rape-allegations-are-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg.htmlSat, 03 Sep 2022 16:47:57 +0000The rumors started as jokes. In January 2021, an anonymous Instagram account posted messages that actor Armie Hammer, 36, the then-unstoppable star of Call Me By Your Name (2017), Operation U.N.C.L.E (2016) and The Lone Ranger (2010), had allegedly sent. These messages had been sent to different women; in them, the actor seemed to exhibit a wide range of sexual fetishes related to cannibalism, bondage and violence. “I am 100% a cannibal…. Fuck. That’s scary to admit. I’ve never admitted that before. I’ve cut the heart out of a living animal before and eaten it while still warm,” one read. “If I fucked you into a vegetative state, I’d keep you, feed you, and keep fucking you,” promised another. At first, the text messages were seen as bizarre texts of questionable authenticity. Some defended Hammer against what appeared to be kink shaming (mocking someone for their unusual sexual preferences), on the assumption that he was being humiliated for having expressed intimate fantasies that were not necessarily linked to real criminal behavior.

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]]><![CDATA[Gilda Love, the 97-year-old drag queen who survived it all: ‘They cut up my dresses with razors, but I just danced in the shreds’]]>https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-07-13/gilda-love-the-97-year-old-drag-queen-who-survived-it-all-they-cut-up-my-dresses-with-razors-but-i-just-danced-in-the-shreds.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-07-13/gilda-love-the-97-year-old-drag-queen-who-survived-it-all-they-cut-up-my-dresses-with-razors-but-i-just-danced-in-the-shreds.htmlWed, 13 Jul 2022 02:23:21 +0000“The neighbors smile / from their back-alley windows [...] The sissies of the south / sing on the roof terraces!” This verse from Federico García Lorca’s Canción del Mariquita (or, Song of the Sissy) is the inspiration for the title of a new film by director Enric Ribes: Cantando en las Azoteas (Singing on the Roof Terraces). A hybrid of documentary and fiction, the film follows legendary Spanish drag queen Gilda Love, an icon of Barcelona canalla – the city’s wild and now nearly extinct underground scene – as she lives out her daily routine in El Raval, a neighborhood in Barcelona’s Ciutat Vella district.

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]]><![CDATA[Adam Sandler: from critical laughingstock to Oscar favorite]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-26/adam-sandler-from-critical-laughingstock-to-oscar-favorite.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-26/adam-sandler-from-critical-laughingstock-to-oscar-favorite.htmlSun, 26 Jun 2022 15:37:55 +0000In a scene from Hustle, the basketball drama that has become the most watched Netflix film worldwide since its June 3 premiere, the character played by Juancho Hernangómez rehearses his triple shot. In front of him, his scout-turned-coach, played by Adam Sandler, tries to distract him: “Your mother is a whore!” “Your sweat smells like piss!” The test is meant to make the young man overcome his weak point: his irascible response to his opponents’ insults, which on the court cause him to falter. “You got to be an iceberg out there, all floating around, and sharp, and taking down ships,” the coach says.

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]]><![CDATA[Wes Craven, the master of horror who wanted to direct dramas]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-23/wes-craven-the-master-of-horror-who-wanted-to-direct-dramas.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-23/wes-craven-the-master-of-horror-who-wanted-to-direct-dramas.htmlThu, 23 Jun 2022 14:00:45 +0000Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman had copies of movies such as Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor and The Blues Brothers comedy in his private video library on Fårö island. But there is no evidence that he ever watched the adaptation a US director dared to make of his classic movie The Virgin Spring (1960). Called The House on the Left, this movie turned his award-winning film into a documentary-style horror show, filled with cruelty, mutilations and visceral scenes of violence. The movie – with its overly pornographic script – sparked protests in cinemas, with spectators rioting to destroy the movie reel. Some members of the public fainted while watching it, while others vomited. “People wouldn’t leave me alone with children. And once I was at a dinner where I was introduced to a woman sitting next to me. When she heard my name she left the table and went home,” the director would later say in an interview. That name was Wes Craven.

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]]><![CDATA[When Eminem refused to be Elvis Presley and made enemies along the way ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-04/when-eminem-refused-to-be-elvis-presley-and-made-enemies-along-the-way.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-04/when-eminem-refused-to-be-elvis-presley-and-made-enemies-along-the-way.htmlSat, 04 Jun 2022 14:19:48 +0000By 2002, Eminem needed to get rid of Slim Shady. The rapper’s alter ego was taking him down the wrong path. The musician, whose real name is Marshall Mathers, had followed his first EP, The Slim Shady EP (1997) with the album The Slim Shady LP (1999) as a way to counter criticism of the serious, dramatic tone of his debut album, Infinite (1996). The Slim Shady character was a loudmouth, satirical version, and it got Mathers into constant trouble, bringing him significant public notoriety. After insulting pop stars like Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys in his songs, the character–who even had his own cartoon series, The Slim Shady Show–now threatened to devour its creators.

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]]><![CDATA[The singer was the traitor: 30 years of ‘Fear of the Dark’, the album that nearly killed Iron Maiden]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-03/the-singer-was-the-traitor-30-years-of-fear-of-the-dark-the-album-that-nearly-killed-iron-maiden.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-03/the-singer-was-the-traitor-30-years-of-fear-of-the-dark-the-album-that-nearly-killed-iron-maiden.htmlFri, 03 Jun 2022 17:17:40 +0000Things were looking bad for Iron Maiden in the early 1990s. British heavy metal’s emblematic band had just experienced a memorable decade, with a handful of albums that became classics as soon as they were released, and the noise of millions of enthusiastic fans overcame the remarkable media and advertising silence, if not censorship, especially from those who saw them as dangerous Satanists. The genre, however, was losing commercial traction in the face of the advance of alternative rock sounds, specifically grunge, which dominated the scene following the release of Nirvana’s Nevermind in September 1991.

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]]><![CDATA[Have we lost interest in sex? ]]>https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-19/have-we-lost-interest-in-sex.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-19/have-we-lost-interest-in-sex.htmlThu, 19 May 2022 16:46:35 +0000Sex is not what it used to be, at least according to a growing number of experts. Columnist Katherine Dee, for example, foresaw the arrival of a wave of “sex negativity” last year in UnHerd magazine in response to the stigmas and anxiety generated by a culture of hedonism and the idea – or fallacy, as she calls it – of free sex.

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]]><![CDATA[Do not record the naked actor: a leak forces Broadway to crack down on audiences’ cell phones]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-17/do-not-record-the-naked-actor-a-leak-forces-broadway-to-crack-down-on-audiences-cell-phones.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-17/do-not-record-the-naked-actor-a-leak-forces-broadway-to-crack-down-on-audiences-cell-phones.htmlTue, 17 May 2022 03:01:18 +0000The same week that the Broadway play Take Me Out received four Tony Award nominations, the theater community has been sent abuzz by a leak: that of the full nude of the play’s star, Jesse Williams, recorded during a moment of the play on an audience member’s cell phone.

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]]><![CDATA[Vin Diesel’s tensions on the ‘Fast & Furious’ set: can the man who launched the franchise end it?]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/vin-diesels-tensions-on-the-fast-furious-set-can-the-man-who-launched-the-franchise-end-it.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/vin-diesels-tensions-on-the-fast-furious-set-can-the-man-who-launched-the-franchise-end-it.htmlSun, 15 May 2022 13:48:42 +0000Vin Diesel, recording in selfie format, announces to his Instagram followers the start of filming on Fast X, the tenth installment of Fast & Furious, scheduled for release in May 2023. Seated on his left is an uncomfortable Justin Lin, director of most of the films in the franchise, who diligently answers the questions that the star fires at him: “What do you think, Justin?” “What are you feeling?” “Could we be facing the best of the saga?” “From the heart, yes,” Lin manages to reply, though his facial expressions and eye movements suggest otherwise.

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]]><![CDATA[Bill Murray: Half a century of chaos, on and off the set]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-12/bill-murray-half-a-century-of-chaos-on-and-off-the-set.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-12/bill-murray-half-a-century-of-chaos-on-and-off-the-set.htmlThu, 12 May 2022 02:41:10 +0000If you have Bill Murray starring in your film, you might reasonably expect it to succeed. The veteran actor, much-loved for his quirky half-smile, the unexpected depth of his characters, and his talent for improvisation, has helped launch the careers of many indie directors.

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]]><![CDATA[The brutal truth about Amityville: It wasn’t ghosts but something worse]]>https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-01-10/it-wasnt-ghosts-but-something-worse-the-brutal-truth-about-amityville.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-01-10/it-wasnt-ghosts-but-something-worse-the-brutal-truth-about-amityville.htmlMon, 10 Jan 2022 12:03:21 +0000It is 3.15am on November 13, 1974. A 23-year-old man, Ronald DeFeo, Jr. (more commonly known as Butch), wakes up and, rifle in hand, executes his entire family: his parents, two sisters and two brothers. All died face down in bed, as if none had been awoken by the sound of gunfire, and none of them had been drugged. It was as if a supernatural force had somehow silenced the weapon and kept the six victims in a trance until their fate was sealed. This is how most of the more than 30 horror movies inspired by the patricide in the Long Island neighborhood of Amityville in New York start – from the original and most famous of all them, The Amityville Horror (1979) – to then go on and tell the story of how another family who moved into the house later experienced paranormal phenomena. These movies often carry the tagline “based on real events” because surprisingly they have some basis in reality: the original court ruling in the case, handed down in 1975, did not make explicit mention of malign spirits, but it did consider the story plausible.

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]]>Bettmann<![CDATA[FACE, the rapper who Putin accuses of being a spy: ‘The future of Russia belongs to people like me’ ]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-01/face-the-rapper-who-putin-accuses-of-being-a-spy-the-future-of-russia-belongs-to-people-like-me.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-01/face-the-rapper-who-putin-accuses-of-being-a-spy-the-future-of-russia-belongs-to-people-like-me.htmlSun, 01 May 2022 18:10:45 +0000There was a time in the Kremlin when photos of Vladimir Putin and the American rapper 2Pac hung together in government offices. It was during the period when Vladislav Surkov was the Russian president’s foreign policy advisor, from 1990 to 2011. The politician no longer works at the presidential headquarters, but hip-hop still matters to Moscow: this month, the government declared a rapper as a “foreign agent.” The artist in question is FACE, a rapper from Ufa, a city of just over a million inhabitants in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan. The musician has nearly two million Instagram followers, and he has been openly critical of President Putin, Russian society and the invasion of Ukraine. The young man heard the news on April 8, which happened to be his 25th birthday. He posted a mocking reaction on Instagram: “Thank you for the best birthday present! A great honor for me and a sign that I am doing everything right.”

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]]><![CDATA[Oscars 2022 night: Will Smith’s slap and the other controversies that set social media buzzing]]>https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-28/oscars-2022-night-will-smiths-slap-and-the-other-controversies-that-set-social-media-buzzing.htmlhttps://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-03-28/oscars-2022-night-will-smiths-slap-and-the-other-controversies-that-set-social-media-buzzing.htmlMon, 28 Mar 2022 11:27:45 +0000The 94th edition of the Academy Awards were set to be the return to normality, after the coronavirus pandemic inevitably tainted the 2021 ceremony. But the shock and discomfort caused by Will Smith, when he slapped comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife, will pass into history. The incident immediately prompted a reaction on social media, and shifted the conversation away from the expected topics of conversation, such as diversity and the unexpected victory of CODA.

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