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 [...]
Phantom islands thought to exist for hundreds of years are being “undiscovered” July 24, 2019 On a voyage from Manila to Mexico in 1528, the Spanish captain Alavaro de Saaverda reported stopping off at a pair of islands a few thousand kilometres north of Papua New Guinea in the Philippine Sea. He named the islands Los Buenos Jardines, and wrote in his diary about the friendly natives he’d met there. [...]
Tom Brown, the superstar chef behind Hackney Wick’s Cornerstone, cooks lunch for Last Shadow Puppets star Miles Kane July 23, 2019 Starter: Salmon pastrami; airdried monkfish; cuttlefish salami; oysters; brill tartare with egg yolk, peas and morels Miles Kane: We met through my mate Gizzi Erskine, didn’t we? She’s a chef, and she told me bout the place. I was intrigued when I heard it was named after an Arctic Monkeys tune. I came for a [...]
The Lion King ‘live action’ remake is a solid cover version but one that’s outshone by the classic July 19, 2019 The Lion King (PG); Dir. Jon Favreau; Three Stars All together now: “Naaaaaaaaants Ingonyamaaaa…”. There are few opening lines that inspire a sense of nostalgia quite like the opening to The Lion King, a fact Disney is betting an awful lot of money on in its latest remake of one of its old classics. With [...]
Equus at Trafalgar Studios review: A fresh take on this sexy, horse-blinding drama July 19, 2019 Everyone knows Equus as the play about the boy who gets off on riding horses. It follows Alan Strang, a 17-year-old trying to navigate his aberrant sexuality under the influence of his overbearing religious mother and disciplinarian socialist father. Martin Dysart is the psychiatrist tasked with treating him after he blinds six horses with a [...]
The director of Super Mario Brothers makes her first feature in 26 years and it’s not what you’re expecting July 19, 2019 Tell It To The Bees (15); Dir. Annabel Jankel; 2 Stars Based on the novel by Fiona Shaw, Tell It To The Bees is set in a small Scottish town in the 50s, where kindly doctor Jean (Anna Paquin) takes in single mother Lydia (Holliday Grainger) as her housekeeper. The two soon begin a relationship, [...]
Making Noise Quietly is a war film that forgoes guns and explosions to focus on those left behind July 19, 2019 There are many dramas about the devastation of war as viewed by those on the front line. Fewer, however, look at the effect of war on those back home. Making Noise Quietly is divided into three stories from three different eras – the first concerns a meeting between a conscientious objector (Luke Thompson) and a [...]
Peter Gynt at the Olivier is a toe-curling, overlong adaptation of Ibsen’s mad epic July 11, 2019 Before the curtain rose for this reimagining of Ibsen’s allegorical play Peer Gynt, audience members were surreptitiously snapping pictures of the set, presumably to impress their Instagram followers. “I’m at the theatre! #culture”. How appropriate for a play (originally a poem but adapted soon after) that asks if a life can be fulfilled simply by winning the [...]
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is an unbridled summer joy July 11, 2019 Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre is one of three London companies presenting the Bard’s most mischievous and magical comedy this summer. How, then, does director Dominic Hill make his Dream stand out? From the outset, it’s a fresh, fun interpretation. It opens to a Riot Club-esque dinner party, with flashing lights and blaring music. The [...]