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Entertainment

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Entertainment

U2: Carnaval de Luz review – rousing, restorative rock from a band ready to take on the world again

(Island) On their first album of new songs in nearly a decade, even earnest Bono-isms carry weight amid music that is impassioned and rejuvenated Even artists who enjoy a seemingly unstoppable imperial period eventually seem to encounter spells of turbulence when the creative planets no longer align – which has been the story of U2’s last 20 years. Try as they might, nothing has matched their earlier albums – especially that mostly uninterrupted golden run from their 1980 debut Boy to 90s benchmarks Achtung Baby and Zooropa. They’ve tried going more pop, becoming more experimental, touring 198

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Crime pays: how Grand Theft Auto became a cultural colossus

Ever since it crashed on to PC and consoles in the late 90s, GTA has been tearing up the game-making rulebook. We explore how its cultural references, rebel spirit and sprawling sense of freedom make it a definitive work of art In the 00s, when the Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar Games revealed a new project, video game writers from all over the UK would make the journey to the company’s office in London. They would be ushered one by one into a darkened room to sit facing an enormous TV. There would be a dish of sweets on a low bench in front of them but, in the reverential hush that desce

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘I didn’t dance until I was 45’: how Jorge Drexler went from repressed doctor to rump-shaking Oscar-winner

How did a Uruguayan medic who grew up under an anti-music dictatorship win a best song Academy award? As he looks set to scoop up more prizes at the Latin Grammys, we meet the extraordinary Jorge Drexler It makes sense that a Uruguayan doctor turned singer would write a song that begins: “Long live science! Long live poetry!” Guitar y Vos (Guitar and You) is also the first track that Jorge Drexler performs this afternoon at a music industry event in the basement of Madrid’s Movistar arena. The second is El Otro Lado del Rio (The Other Side of the River), which he composed for the Che Guevara r

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘My father loved Duncan more than he loved us’: the 30-year passion at the heart of the Bloomsbury set – and the family raised in its image

As the work of Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant features in a major exhibition, Cordelia Roche reflects on her father’s decades-long relationship with the painter – as friend, muse, but never lover After Duncan Grant died in our house, in Aldermaston in Berkshire, at the age of 93, I remember my father’s knees buckling and him falling to the ground. It was 1978, the end of their 32-year relationship, and the end of an era. My father Paul Roche, a poet, writer and translator of Greek plays, seemed to crumble before my eyes. He was 61, a father of five, and I was the youngest. Duncan, the painter,

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Look at Me by Dustin Hoffman review – an era-defining actor says his piece

At 89, the star of the Graduate and Rain Man demonstrates both brilliance and a startling lack of self-awareness The choice of title for an actor’s autobiography can be revealing. Sylvester Stallone went with The Steps, conflating life’s challenging progress with those steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art that Rocky euphorically ran up. Michael Douglas cheerfully and unreflectively called his One Helluva Ride. Dustin Hoffman’s is one of those that harks back to the poignantly vulnerable youthful world in which the acting bug first took effect. Al Pacino called his Sonny Boy; Anthony Hopkins

The Guardian
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