Notting Hill Carnival’s ‘Dancing Granny’ signs underwear deal with Sloggi after video goes viral August 30, 2019 Almost 1m people attended Notting Hill Carnival’s annual carnival last weekend. One of them, Colette Zacca, left with viral fame and an underwear deal with German brand Sloggi. Read More: Notting Hill Carnival 2019: Everything you need to know about London’s best parade The 56-year-old from Stamford Hill has been dubbed “Dancing Granny” online after [...]
Wolfenstein: Youngblood review – a bonkers but thrilling co-op experiment August 28, 2019 Platform: PS4 (tested), XBO, PC Five years ago, Wolfenstein: The New Order took a gloriously silly, decades old game about shooting Nazis and turned it into a gloriously silly, throughly modern game about shooting Nazis. It married lightning-quick gunplay with a pulpy, sci-fi yarn about monstrous mechanical Panzerhunds and fascist moon bases, while somehow making [...]
Glass half full: Optimists outlive pessimists, study finds August 27, 2019 Viewing the glass as half full may be the secret to a longer life, according to a US study that found a positive correlation between levels of optimism and longevity. Conducted by Boston University School of Medicine, the study found that optimists not only live longer in general but have a better chance than pessimists [...]
The Doctor at the Almeida review: Robert Icke signs off with a masterful medical ethics drama August 22, 2019 Robert Icke approaches a classic play the way a mechanic might approach a motor, breaking it down to its constituent pieces, working out what makes it tick, and then replacing half of it with gleaming new parts. This approach paid dubious dividends in his largely hellish revision of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck last year, but [...]
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark film review: Joyously grisly but too scary for young fans August 22, 2019 Retro is very much in vogue, especially when it comes to horror. Following the spate of nostalgic Stephen King revivals and the success of Netflix’s Stranger Things, it would be easy to write off Scary Stories as just another algorithmically-generated, mild-horror cash grab. But that would be doing it a disservice: it’s a soulful tour [...]
Once Upon A time In Hollywood review: Another classic from Quentin Tarantino August 15, 2019 Even in a summer dominated by Disney, the 9th film from Quentin Tarantino demands attention. The promise of the Pulp Fiction director’s take on The Manson Family has resulted in the biggest opening weekend ever for a Tarantino film, giving a small flicker of hope to anyone who sees a cinematic future beyond remakes and [...]
Brainiac Live review: Anarchic science stunts for kids who are really into loud noises August 15, 2019 Sky One’s Brainiac television show feels like it aired approximately one hundred years ago, in the foreign land that is the years 2003 to 2008. Fronted by Top Gear man Richard Hammond, and then later by the excellent Vic Reeves, it was a vehicle for pop-science tomfoolery and explosive hijinkery which deftly walked the intellectual [...]
Evita at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre review: A gripping, modern revision of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s classic August 14, 2019 The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is ending this summer’s season with a bang – quite literally. Within five minutes of this new production of Evita – the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about the rags-to-riches story of Argentina’s 1940s first lady – the audience is jolted by fireworks, towers of flames and football-match-style flares. It [...]
Let’s Play: How Youtubers are making millions playing video games July 25, 2019 For the past decade, largely unnoticed by traditional media, scores of YouTubers have been racking up millions of views by posting videos of themselves playing video games. These videos, called Let’s Plays, occupy a niche position in the new online ecosystem. Let’s Players aren’t competitive gamers; in fact, they’re often pretty hopeless at video games. [...]
The rise of the ASMR-tists: The online phenomenon touted as an antidote to anxiety and insomnia July 25, 2019 The slurp of a woman eating soup; the abrupt snip of scissors through hair; the crinkle of tinfoil being scrunched into a ball. For some people, these everyday sounds ignite a mysterious, near-ecstatic sensation known as Auto Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR). This reaction is characterised by a kind of low-level euphoria, similar to the prickly [...]