Great legs. Even for an antelope
By Sam Wollaston
Section
Culture
Arts, entertainment, television, theatre and more.
37,094 stories · Page 1766 of 1767
Culture stories
Radio
We're embarking on the centenary year of Noel Coward, which gets off to a mixed start. Tonight (Radio 4, 8.30pm) revives two plays in which The Master starred in the '30s. Still Life was screened as Brief Encounter, with the ending cleaned up for the censor (the original gets the waiting-room lovers into bed). Why anyone should revive Red Peppers is a complete mystery. Its portrait of a failing variety act doesn't rate one rotten egg.
By Harold Jackson·
Watching brief
Naked Eurovision (BBC-1, 8.30pm) A cheery dark-days reminder that the sun will shine again, that le tout Europe will once again be united in song and cheesy dance routines, that Cyprus will again achieve nul points.
By Sandy Smithies·
Watching brief
Buffy The Vampire Slayer Welcome To The Hellmouth (BBC-2, 8.0pm) Young fans of Wes Craven's fang-in-cheek slasher horror movie Scream will be instantly at home with this imported series, made in the same jokey, knowing style, which opens with a feature-length episode. Already a hit in the States, it casts Sarah Michelle Gellar, from Scream 2, as the teenage newcomer to a high school in affluent southern California who has a secret life as undoer of the undead. And yes, the British actor who plays her mentor is familiar: he's Anthony S Head, who conducted a long-running coffee commercial dalliance.
By Sandie Smithies·
Listening Brief
In 1770, the Crown granted Robert Edwards, a Welsh naval officer, 78 acres of land in the newly conquered colony of New York. He leased most of it to the local church on condition it returned to his descendants after 99 years. That should have happened in 1877, but the Edwards family is still battling for its inheritance. There's some understandable opposition: the property is in the heart of Manhattan (Radio 4, 11.0am) and valued at $680,000 million.
By Harold Jackson·
It's about the economy, stupid
We British are just as fascinated by Bill Clinton as the Americans, perhaps because our popular culture is drowning in brain-dead Americana and we've seen the way our Prime Minister sits up and begs for a dog-biscuit whenever Clinton whistles. In The Clinton Complex (BBC2), Mark Lawson wanted to know why a nation regarded by Europeans as being 'all Bibles, flags and bombed abortion clinics' continues to rally behind President Bill. The more embarrassing the revelations about the ways he amuses himself during those long afternoons in the Oval Office, and the more his Republican opponents foam at the mouth about his vile moral turpitude, the more Americans seem to love him.
By Adam Sweeting·
Last night's TV
So do you feel lucky, monk? The bizarre losses of identity suffered by McCallum or Dangerfield have not yet reached 12th century Shrewsbury. Cadfael (ITV) has not replaced its title character with stand-ins called Beowulf or Gawain, but continues to be built around Derek Jacobi as the medieval gumshoe. Comfortingly, he still potters about in a humble hessian smock with tonsured head, dispensing arcane herbal remedies and potted platitudes.
Adam Sweeting·
Dish of the day
The Magic Keeper (C4, 7.30am) Seventies children's icon Johnny Morris (looking like a rather elderly ruminating camel himself these days) takes his zoo-keeper's uniform out of mothballs for this trip round Bristol and Twycross zoos, set to music by French composer Darius Milhaud.
Jonathan Creek·
The Rachel capers
Once again she was front-page news in Australia. The papers reported that Rachel Griffiths walked in, covered in glitter wearing a crown of thorns - and topless. One of her more outre roles? No, this time Griffiths was campaigning against a massive new casino owned by the treasurers of the rightwing Liberal Party. She was outraged at the development of a "big, ugly conglomerate pimple on the face of Melbourne".
By Howard Feinstein·
Britain's Oscar hopes
This week the first 'For Your Consideration' film adverts have appeared in Variety, the showbiz bible. These are aimed at members of the American Academy, who will soon be deciding the nominations for next year's Oscars. Those three words invariably appear above the ads in hope as much as expectation.
By Derek Malcolm·
The prime of Ms Meryl Streep
Meryl Streep glitters with tiredness. She's on a black-coffee trip that has carried her from a 7am arrival at Dublin airport through two days of interviews, a meet-the-worthies gala screening of her latest film, and which will whirl her up to Donegal to go through the whole mad jig again in the village where her latest film, Dancing At Lughnasa, is set.
By Claire Armitstead·
Nolte but nice
When Robert Mitchum and James Stewart died within 48 hours of each other, tribute after tribute sighed that they don't make stars of that calibre any more. And it's largely true. But one man can be compared to Mitchum at least, right down to a reportedly roistering private life.
By Derek Malcolm·
Shoe-shine star
The true heart of Rio de Janeiro is not Copacabana beach or the outstretched arms of the statue of the Redeemer - but Central do Brasil station. Four hundred thousand people pass through Rio's Central Station every day. At the intersection of all main rail networks and Rio's metro system, a moving wall of travellers and commuters passes hundreds of stalls where young boys shine thousands of shoes, and professional letter-writers sit waiting for their illiterate customers.
One of them
Sir Ian McKellen had been taken into the midwinter afternoon by the photographer, who wanted a picture of him on a bench in front of the Thames, and when he came back he hurled himself at the radiator. 'So Cold!' he lamented loudly, inspecting me from the corner of his eye.
By Marianne Macdonald·
Hankie not hunky
NICE. Nice nice nice nice nice. Whatever puny criticisms I might make of Tom Hanks and I will do my best the fact remains that he belongs to the underpopulated James Stewart school of totally nice, honourable, decent movie stars. We met in the nastiest of interview settings a one-hour slot in a hotel-room publicity treadmill and Hanks had a streaming cold, but he was charming and courteous and friendly and helpful. He and I and Jane Bown, such old hands at this game, went through the familiar stately gavotte and I kept wishing that a gang of grenade-toting guerrillas would burst through the windows and take us all prisoner, or at least one of the hotel employees would run amok.
By Lynn Barber·
Is this music to die for?
February 1 1995: On this day Richey Edwards (James), Manic Street Preachers' guitarist, disappeared. In the months following Andrew Smith looks at the reaction of the fans.
Andrew Smith·
Sweet exile
February 1 1995: On this day Richey Edwards (James) from the Manic Street Preachers went missing. Caroline Sullivan and Alex Bellos reflect on his career in the aftermath of his disappearance.
Caroline Sullivan and Alex Bellos·
Sound of the outsider: Obituary of Kurt Cobain
April 8 1994:On this day Kurt Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home. He had committed suicide. This is how the Guardian reported the event.
Adam Sweeting·
Band Aid gears up for action after 'ultimate day'
'Desperation is the mother of excellence,' Bob Geldof reflected yesterday as the total known pledges for African aid in Britain alone rose above pounds 4.2 million, with substantially more due in the post. The response raised buoyant hopes that the British harvest from Saturday's record-breaking pop concert would be more than half the pounds 10 million which Live Aid originally expected from the world-wide series of events. The global total for famine relief and development was being estimated with increasing confidence yesterday at pounds 50 million.
John Ezard·
Comment on the Live Aid rock concert
Having watched and heard ten hours of the Live Aid bash at Wembley, you have to be a bit amazed and abashed at the sheer, sweet, innocent, hopeful, impossible altruism of the whole idea, and of the thousands upon thousands of people in that stadium. Christian missionaries are long out of fashion, but I believe some of these people have that same hope of a perfect world. But the missionaries were more prudent, since the world of which they had such high hopes was the next world.
Terry Coleman·