Film, music, books and creative life around the world.
The Chicks marked twenty years of Taking the Long Way with sold-out performances at New York’s Beacon Theatre. Their anniversary presentation revisited an album shaped by the backlash that followed Natalie Maines’s criticism of the Iraq war in 2003.
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Larger Than Life brings Aardman Animations into an immersive presentation at Lightroom. The experience combines large-scale imagery with documentary material about the studio behind Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.
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The fiftieth anniversary of Naseem Khan’s The Arts Britain Ignores is renewing discussion of whose creativity receives recognition in British cultural life. Published in 1976, the report challenged a narrow understanding of national culture.
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Ian McKellen will appear in the UK premiere of An Ark through a mixed-reality performance rather than a conventional stage appearance. Factory International plans to present the production at Manchester’s Aviva Studios next spring.
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A new book explores the making of FW Murnau’s Faust as the silent film reaches its centenary. The Faust Bible reproduces a surviving production scrapbook, combining designs, stills and behind-the-scenes photographs from the 1926 film.
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A London exhibition of Georg Baselitz’s Heroes paintings revisits the artist’s forceful engagement with German history. The works, begun in 1965, form the focus of a Guardian review that emphasises their emotional intensity.
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Bonnie Garmus follows Lessons in Chemistry with Peck & Peck, a novel set inside an eccentric New York poetry magazine. Its young protagonist, Batter Gray, wants a literary life despite his parents’ preference for a more secure career.
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Finland is investing fresh attention in Alvar Aalto’s architectural legacy through restoration, exhibition and international recognition. A Guardian feature contrasts that position with the architect’s earlier frustration that his home country did not sufficiently appreciate his work.
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Caroline Williams’ production Nina follows performers auditioning for the role in Chekhov’s The Seagull. The setting places the expectations of an audition beside a director’s increasingly intrusive demands, making the process itself the centre of the drama.
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Tarek Atoui’s Turbine Hall installation combines water basins, large stones and suspended musical forms at Tate Modern. Oversized trumpets and glowing drums hang above an environment visitors can encounter physically as well as visually.
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Actor Julie Hesmondhalgh says financial pressures are weakening regional identity in British theatre. She argues that co-productions between venues can sometimes create broadly transferable shows at the expense of stories rooted in a particular place.
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Digger, starring Tom Cruise and directed by Alejandro G Iñárritu, is facing a large projected loss after a weak second weekend. Reporting cited by The Guardian put North American weekend revenue at about $3.2 million, down sixty percent from its opening.
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