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. [...]
Gran Turismo film review: Racing game screeches to the big screen August 11, 2023 Films about video games used to be box office poison, but times are changing. Super Mario Bros is the most successful film of 2023 so far, while Sonic The Hedgehog and Mortal Kombat have grown into formidable movie franchises. Hoping to succeed where Need For Speed failed is Gran Turismo, a movie based on the [...]
La Cage Aux Folles, Regent’s Park, review: Blisteringly smart, this is the show of the summer August 10, 2023 La Cage aux Folles review and star rating: ★★★★★ Blimey. I want this all over again, and then again some more! The Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s new production of La Cage aux Folles is a blistering hit, two-and-a-half hours of raucous cabaret that conveys the punkish energy of the artform while also feeling utterly [...]
L’immensita film review: A startling portrait of gender dysphoria August 10, 2023 Many directors put something of themselves into a story, but Emanuele Crialese went a step further with his latest, drama L’immensita (The Immensity). The Italian filmmaker, who burst onto the scene with 2002’s Respira, used the film’s premiere in Venice to publicly come out as a Transgender Man, explaining the autobiographical nature of his story. [...]
Red White and Royal Blue director Matthew Lopez on filming ‘tender’ gay sex scenes August 10, 2023 You’re no doubt sick of reading about Barbie and Oppenheimer by now, so we’ve got good news: a new duo of releases are here for you to get excited about. TV series Heartstopper has just dropped its second season on Netflix and so has new Amazon film Red, White & Royal Blue. Unlike Barbenheimer, what [...]
Standon Calling festival: A photo-journal of this amazing festival August 8, 2023 Festival season is coming to a close. We sent photographer Mike Williams to Standon Calling to take a photo-journal of the event, from the amazing performances to the quieter moments and the food wagons. Here’s what he found.
Tech bosses and finance CEOs are using holograms to be in two places at once August 8, 2023 C-suite execs have started using holograms powered by artificial intelligence to attend board meetings and events while remaining physically in other locations – for as much as £35,000. Mike Blackman, the managing director of Integrated Systems Europe, an annual audiovisual conference, was one of the first to test the technology. While at a conference in [...]
Wanna feel old? Your old Blackberry is now the subject of a nostalgic movie August 4, 2023 “Want to feel old…?” has become a tired meme – but seriously, want to feel old? Blackberry, the world’s first smartphone and once the biggest company in Canada, is now such a nostalgic legacy product that it’s the subject of a movie being released later this year. In a former life as a tech reporter [...]