5 things we love about Houghton festival August 18, 2023 Houghton Festival has wrapped for another year, drawing a close to four days of electronic music in a gorgeous woodland setting. It wasn’t just incredible sets and beautiful scenery, though. Hilariously, Kate Middleton was on site on Saturday after visiting a friend who lives in the Houghton Hall where the festival is set. If you [...]
Strays movie review: Is Will Ferrell’s dog movie any good? August 18, 2023 The R-Rated comedy gets a canine twist in Strays, a crude shaggy dog story. Will Ferrell voices Reggie, an optimistic dog that adores his owner Doug (Will Forte). In reality, Doug is a selfish loser who wants Reggie gone after a breakup, and dumps him in the city with no way home. There, Reggie meets [...]
Barbie movie breaks huge cinema record, beating Batman: The Dark Knight August 17, 2023 The new Barbie movie has become the highest-grossing Warner Bros. film in US cinema history, beating Batman: The Dark Knight’s record. 2008’s The Dark Knight previously held the record with $536 million in takings at the US domestic box office, but now Barbie has surpassed that record with $537.5 million. And globally it has taken [...]
The Blackening film review: A fresh take on horror-comedy August 17, 2023 There are almost as many films that make fun of the conventions of horror as there are traditional horror films. It was fresh and smart 25 years ago when Scream became a cultural phenomena, but now anyone making the same statement has to dig a bit deeper. Tim Story, the director of Barbershop and Fantastic [...]
Lie With Me film review: A touching gay drama August 17, 2023 A big hit at least year’s BFI Flare Festival, Lie With Me is a story of confronting the past to heal the present. Guillaume de Tonquédec plays Stéphane, a successful author who returns to his hometown for the first time in 35 years to be the guest of honour at a corporate event. At a [...]
The Effect at the National Theatre: A pulse-quickening exploration of love in the age of medication August 16, 2023 Rarely does a play tackle quite so succinctly and powerfully our inability to reconcile the mass of grey jelly inside our heads with the impossibly complex tangle of desires and emotions that make us human. Jamie Lloyd, one of the finest directors working today, brings Lucy Prebble’s play kicking and screaming – often literally – [...]
Red, White and Royal Blue review: Choose Heartstopper over this August 16, 2023 We’re still very much living in an era where more LGBTQ representation on screen can only be a good thing, and that is certainly the case with Matthew Lopez’s first feature film, Red, White & Royal Blue. This fantastical story about an unlikely pairing between the son of the President of the United States and [...]
Laya’s Horizon: Take to the skies in a zen-like iPhone adventure August 15, 2023 Some games demand exacting care and utmost concentration. Let your mind wander when you’re playing Elden Ring or Hollow Knight or Overwatch and you’re likely to receive a message telling you you’ve been killed in some horrible way. Other games benefit from a disconnect between the player and the game, inducing a “flow state” in [...]
Leica Q3 review: The best travel camera ever made August 12, 2023 How I agonised as I ummed and ahhed over how to say this. Worrying whether to pull my punches, or give it to you straight? But enough of this torture. Let’s just cut to the chase. This camera is a masterpiece. Come on, a Leica with autofocus! You’ve got to get breathless. Believe me, there [...]
Haunted Mansion review: Second time lucky for movie based on Disneyland ride? August 11, 2023 Like Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion is a big screen version of a popular Disneyland ride. The similarities don’t end there: both had a film adaptation released in 2003, with the original Haunted Mansion, starring Eddie Murphy, bombing at the box office while Johnny Depp’s Captain Sparrow shambled all the way to the bank. [...]