The great potter explains why he turned his decades-long fixation with Axel Salto – maker of unsettling stoneware full of tentacle sproutings and knotty growths – into a new show

Potter and writer Edmund de Waal, a dark silhouette of neat workwear against the blinding white of his studio, is erupting with thoughts, all of them tumbling out of him at once. He is giving me a tour of the former gun factory on a London industrial estate gently disciplined into architectural calm. It has work stations for his staff (it’s quite an operation); store rooms; and a main space nearly empty but for some giant black lidded vessels he made in Denmark, as capacious as coffins. At either end, up discreet sets of steps, are the places of raw creation. One, with its potter’s wheel, is where he makes; the other, with its desk and bookshelves, is where he writes.

He opens a door to the room housing his two mighty kilns, its back wall lined with rows of shelves with experiments in form and glaze, and tells me of his irritation when people comment on the sheer tidiness of the whole place. “It’s porcelain,” he says with passionate emphasis. Dust and dirt are the enemy. Potters, he points out, “have struggled for hundreds and hundreds of years to keep things clean so that they don’t blow up in kilns, or don’t bloat or don’t dunt or all the other myriad things that can happen”. He is old enough, he says, to have had the kind of potter’s apprenticeship that involved the endless sweeping up of clay dust. Dust is the traditional bringer of potter’s lung – the chronic condition, silicosis. Clouds of dust surround any pottery-making endeavour, if you’re not careful.

The Yorkshire comic was going nowhere with his act which relied on gimmicks, set-pieces and standing on tables. So he decided it was time to live a more interesting – and stressful – life

What’s the opposite of an overnight success? Should we call Ian Smith a slow burner, a sleeper hit? The Yorkshireman’s last two shows, both fantastic, were nominated for the Edinburgh comedy award, he has a popular Radio 4 series, Ian Smith is Stressed, and growing TV visibility. Now he’s embarking on a second UK tour. But breakout success was a long time coming for the 37-year-old. “I did my first gig when I was 17,” he tells me over coffee in London, “which I find horrific. It makes me feel old.”

What took him so long? Might one factor be that Smith’s is a traditional brand of standup – fretful everyman sends up his own anxiety – in a culture that prizes the new and different? That can’t be it, he says. “Because I had so many gimmicks! That was a big part of my standup.” He cites the high-concept shows (comedy in a bath; comedy on a bed) that made Tim Key’s name. “I loved standup with slightly theatrical set-pieces. That was my voice for four shows. I got a review that said, ‘Ian substitutes writing jokes with standing on tables and shouting at people.’ And it was fair enough. I went through a real standing-on-tables phase.”

Choreographers hear, somehow, a larger heartbeat; it’s fascinating and revelatory to have them reinterpret your compositions, writes the US musician, ahead of a triple bill featuring his music coming to Sadler’s Wells.

When I’m writing music, one of the primary challenges is figuring out how to notate rhythm in a way that is clear to the interpreters. When I hear a phrase in my head it is free of the confines of bar lines, but, in practical application, eventually it needs to get squeezed into recognisable shapes and containers. Every composer has their own strategy (some eschew bar lines entirely, or use alternative notational strategies outside the traditional western systems), but it’s always a negotiation: does the way the composer notates the rhythm correspond to how it should best appear on the flute player’s music stand?

I have distinct memories of being 13, hearing a piece (specifically, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements), basically memorising it from the recording, and then being absolutely shocked when I finally saw the score. “That’s where the downbeat is?!” Stravinsky’s sense of time and my understanding of the same were at variance in a way I still find exciting: the idea that there are infinite superimpositions of a practical system (notation) over a medium (sound) most often experienced by an audience without the score. Understanding that notating rhythm is artificial yet crucial requires both personal precision and empathy with future interpreters.

We would like to hear your favourite characters whose gamechanging arrivals lifted the shows they were in

From Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones to the Hot Priest in Fleabag, we have picked our favourite 18 TV characters whose gamechanging arrival in later seasons have lifted their whole show. Now we would like to hear yours. Who is your favourite late-arriving TV character and why?

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As Gore Verbinski’s AI-apocalypse film Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die hurtles towards us, it’s clear from the over-caffeinated trailer that we won’t be getting another ponderous parable about robot souls, digital enlightenment or the hubris of man

It’s easy to forget, given the current glut of robot-uprising doom flicks, that Hollywood has been doing the artificial intelligence thing for decades – long before anything resembling true AI existed in the real world. And now we live in an era in which a chatbot can write a passable sonnet, it is perhaps surprising that there hasn’t been a huge shift in how film-makers approach this particular corner of sci-fi.

Gareth Edwards’ The Creator (2023) is essentially the same story about AIs being the newly persecuted underclass as 1962’s The Creation of the Humanoids, except that the former has an $80m VFX budget and robot monks while the latter has community-theatre production values. Moon (2009) and 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey are both about the anxiety of being trapped with a soft-voiced machine that knows more than you. Her (2013) is basically Electric Dreams (1984) with fewer synth-pop arpeggios.

Regarding music played in UK nightclubs, more than £5.7m each year is allegedly allocated by performing rights societies to the wrong artists

Electronic music artists, producers and songwriters are missing out on millions of pounds of lost revenue in the UK, after their music appears in DJ sets but the subsequent royalties are not properly distributed, according to new research.

The Berlin-based Fair Play initiative has found that only 28% of the fees paid by the average UK nightclub are being distributed correctly to artists. More than £5.7m a year is allegedly being misallocated by performing rights organisations, and paid out to the wrong people.

Gaming platform to use facial age estimation to limit chats to similar age groups, as allegations of grooming grow

The online games platform Roblox is to start blocking children from talking to adult and much older teen strangers from next month as it faces fresh lawsuits alleging it has been exploited by predators to groom children as young as seven.

Roblox has reached 150 million daily players of games including viral hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot but has been hit by legal claims alleging the system’s design has made “children easy prey for paedophiles”.

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the markets in Japan and the US. But in Europe, a technologically superior rival was making it look like an ancient relic

There’s an old maxim that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as it is anywhere else. Nowadays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you were brought up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this chunky contraption essentially was the only game in town – the company had Mario after all, and its vice-like hold on third-party developers created a monopoly for major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers ruled the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior rival.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the autumn of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based around the famed Z80 CPU (used in home computers such as the Spectrum, Amstrad and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it boasted 8kb of RAM, a 64-colour palette and the ability to generate 32 sprites on screen at one time – making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

Director Joachim Trier’s family drama has five nominations, including best actor for Skarsgård, while Oliver Laxe’s techno thriller Sirāt has four nominations

Norwegian director Joachim Trier is leading the race for a triumph at the European film awards, with five nominations in key categories for his family drama Sentimental Value.

The Cannes Grand Prix winner is nominated for best European film, best screenplay and best director, with further best actor and best actress nominations for Stellan Skarsgård and Renate Reinsve.

One Day author leading writing team bringing one of the best-known literary creations of the 1980s to life

A writing team led by the One Day author, David Nicholls, and that includes Caitlin Moran is bringing Sue Townsend’s The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13¾ to the small screen in a 10-part BBC One adaptation of the classic tale of teenage life in British suburbia.

Nicholls, who described the book as “a classic piece of comic writing and an incredible piece of ventriloquism on Sue Townsend’s part”, will adapt the book that produced one of the best-known literary creations of the 1980s.

The actor will appear opposite British film star Noah Jupe in a production directed by Robert Icke opening in March

Stranger Things’ Sadie Sink is to make her West End debut next year in Romeo and Juliet, opposite British film star Noah Jupe, in a production directed by Olivier award-winner Robert Icke.

Sink, who plays Max in the Netflix sci-fi hit, started her career on stage. She was cast in the lead role in the musical Annie when she was 10, and remained in it for 18 months in New York. “I was a Broadway kid, so I’ve always dreamed about doing a show in the West End,” she said. “To get to do that in one of Shakespeares’s most famous plays under Rob’s direction with Noah will be such an exciting challenge. London theatre has this incredible energy, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.” Sink becomes the latest in a line of US stars who have made their West End debuts in recent years, including Sigourney Weaver (The Tempest), Brie Larson (Elektra) and Susan Sarandon (Mary Page Marlowe).

Brazilian actor will star in The Trial: Enemy of the People, which examines modern political and environmental conflicts

The award-winning Brazilian actor Wagner Moura is to star in a new play being staged at three European festivals next year, in the first joint production since their foundation two years after the second world war.

Moura, who is being tipped for an Oscar nomination for the Secret Agent, will take the lead role in a new production updating the Henrik Ibsen play An Enemy of the People to examine modern political and environmental conflicts.

Photography group Hundred Heroines was removed after Meta’s AI tools mistook name for class-A opioid reference

When the UK charity Hundred Heroines had its Facebook group taken down it was accompanied by a message from the social media company that simply said the page “goes against our community standards on drugs”.

Now, after more than a month of appealing, the photography charity is celebrating the reinstatement of its group after the tech company’s AI tools mistook it for an organisation promoting the class-A opioid heroin.

Eminem claims consumers may mistakenly think he is linked to the Sydney beach brand – but Australia is no stranger to lawsuits from US rappers

Eminem has launched legal action against the Australian beach brand Swim Shady, alleging its name is too close to that of his trademarked alter ego, Slim Shady.

The 53-year-old rapper, real name Marshall B Mathers III, filed a petition to cancel Swim Shady’s US trademark days after it was successfully granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in September.

Edna O’Brien on her sofa, Joseph O’Connor in his garden, Seamus Heaney surrounded by books … British photographer Steve Pyke on capturing the greats of Irish literature

In January the island’s beaches were inundated with waves of plastic pollution, a phenomenon that has been getting worse by the year. Photographer and film-maker Sean Gallagher travelled to Bali to document the increasing tide of rubbish washing up on beaches and riverbanks, and the people facing the monumental challenge of cleaning up. His portraits are on show as part of the 2025 Head On photo festival at Bondi Beach promenade until 30 November

One of the most prolific and popular actors of his generation, he reflects on therapy, homophobia, why he suspects now is the worst time in history for trans people, and his secret life as a geek

Russell Tovey’s best characters often seem to have it all together, typically as a barrier to further interrogation. Take his recent projects: in surreal BBC sitcom Juice, Tovey plays Guy, a buttoned-up therapist with a seemingly perfect life, hobbled by an aversion to recklessness. Then there’s the closeted Andrew Waters in award-winning American indie film Plainclothes, a well-respected married man of faith who secretly cruises New York shopping mall toilets. Even in the forthcoming Doctor Who spin-off, The War Between the Land and the Sea, Tovey’s character, Barclay, is an ordinary office clerk who is swept up into a planet-saving mission while trying to keep his family from falling apart. In each performance, Tovey anchors his characters with a beguiling mix of strength, empathy and vulnerability.

In interviews, the immaculately put together Tovey, 44, often seems similarly well-adjusted, speaking eloquently about his acting, his passion for art (he co-hosts the successful podcast Talk Art and has co-written three books on the subject) and his advocacy for the LGBTQ+ community. Flaws, if there are any, are carefully stage-managed.

Mortified documentarian James Blake meets young men who have drifted towards misogynist influencers – and finds them lonely, heartbreaking and on ‘semen retention journeys’ to control their sex drives

Just as you can accurately measure the quality of a documentary about pornography by the number of examples of its subject that it does not show, so too you can judge a programme about “incel” culture/the manosphere/toxic masculinity by the amount of time it does not devote to the noxious leaders of the subculture. Porn documentary makers often seem to use their commission to indulge their own murky fascinations, or at the very least fill the screen with naked women as an easier way to hook viewers than constructing a decent programme. Similarly, stuffing any programme with footage of the poster boys’ diatribes, generally about pussies (female, metonymically; males metaphorically), power and the need for men to wield one over the other is a titillating opportunity and an easy shortcut to engagement.

Belfast broadcaster James Blake admirably avoids this trap in his hour-long film Men of the Manosphere. It has snippets of the loudest, vilest voices, doing their loudest, vilest thing, telling young, disaffected, vulnerable men what they want to hear: that the problems in their lives are the fault of women, feminism, woke society, beta men and anyone who is not full of ambition, independent spirit and willing to subscribe to the influencer’s latest course on how to be a successful man. If you have spotted any inconsistencies here, you are probably a blue-pilled cuck and not the target market, so please move along.

There are shades of Gossip Girl, Desperate Housewives and everything Nicole Kidman has appeared in for the last five years. Put your brain aside, and enjoy

That its ultra-wealthy characters live in a place called Richford Lake tells you almost everything you need to know about the glossy new thriller Wild Cherry. Yes, it’s another entry in the increasingly popular eat-the-rich genre. Yes, it has shades of The White Lotus and everything starring Nicole Kidman for the past five years. Yes, most of the budget has gone to wardrobe, with any woman over the age of 30 apparently allergic to synthetic fibres and every actor seemingly cast primarily for her ability to carry off swagged silk and cashmere in warm beige tones. Yes, you should have bought shares in the colour camel years ago but it’s too late now. Yes, the insular community and soapy vibe suggests an ancestry that includes Desperate Housewives and Gossip Girl. Yes, in short, it’s trash with pretensions. But trash with pretensions is as fun a way to spend the long winter evenings as any, so why not set your brain aside and enjoy it?

We begin with the obligatory the-future-as-prelude scene, which here involves four women – two older, two younger – standing in a well-appointed bathroom in their underwear scrubbing blood off their hands. We then flashback to begin the six-part journey to finding out what the jolly heck is going on.

Secret cameras roll as Amira Smajic advises criminal groups. Plus: artist Yinka Shonibare tells his deeply affecting story. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Four
Denmark has been named the least corrupt country in the world for the past six years, but this astonishing documentary series by film-maker Mads Brügger shows a darker side to the nation. Secret cameras film the lawyer Amira Smajic, a once trusted adviser to notorious gangs, and her undercover meetings with criminal clients – starting with a double bill that follows cases including dumping illegal toxic waste and managing bankruptcy without scrutiny. Hollie Richardson

A chance viewing of the comic’s World Tour of Scotland made me swap Australia for the Highlands, although things didn’t quite go to plan …

I was 23 and thought I had found my path in life. I’d always wanted to work with animals, and I had just landed a job as a vet nurse in Melbourne. I was still learning the ropes, but I imagined I would stay there for years, building a life around the work. Then, five months in, the vet called me into his office and told me it wasn’t working out. “It’s not you,” he said, “I just really hate training people.” His previous nurse had been with him for decades; she knew his every move. I didn’t. And just like that, I was out of a job.

I drove home crying, feeling utterly adrift. I wasn’t sure whether to try again at another vet clinic or rip up the plan entirely and do something else. After spending a few days floating around aimlessly, trying to recalibrate my life, I turned on the TV, needing something to take my mind off things. And there he was: Billy Connolly, striding across a windswept Scottish landscape in his World Tour of Scotland documentary.

After a decade, the Netflix hit is bowing out. Ahead of its last episodes, the show’s creators and cast talk about big 80s hair, recruiting a Terminator killer – and the birds Kate Bush sent them

How do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside Down and whether the plucky teens of Hawkins, Indiana can fight off Vecna for good, but it is early November 2025, and its creators Matt and Ross Duffer are finding it difficult to talk about. It’s not just because they’re feeling the pressure, or because the risk of spoilers and leaks is so dangerously high. It’s because the identical twin brothers from North Carolina are just not ready. “It makes me sad,” says Ross. “Because it’s easier to not think about the show actually ending.”

A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. Few had heard of Vecna, Mind Flayers or Demogorgons. In 2015, the brothers – self-professed nerds and movie obsessives – were about to begin shooting their first ever TV series. Stranger Things was to be a supernatural adventure steeped in 80s nostalgia, paying tribute to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. Part of their pitch to Netflix was that it would be “John Carpenter mashed up with ET”. Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine were in it, so it wasn’t exactly low-key, but it was by no means a dead-cert for success, not least because it was led by a cast of young unknowns. The first season came out in the summer of 2016, smashed Netflix viewing records, and almost immediately established itself as a bona fide TV phenomenon.

This revival of the classic BBC drama strand is utterly lacking in the innovative spirit of the original. The next Dennis Potter might be out there somewhere … but they certainly aren’t here

Fantastic news! Channel 5 has revived the BBC’s wildly influential and much romanticised drama strand Play for Today. Well, it seemed like fantastic news until it became clear that the broadcaster has merely copied the name and necessarily broad premise – a collection of standalone dramas by different, often unestablished, writers and directors – and duly trumpeted a return for the trailblazing television format.

Trading on this cherished cultural heritage with no connection to the original is a brazen move. Will the programmes themselves be as audacious? The BBC’s Play for Today, which concluded 41 years ago, had a radical spirit, pushing the boundaries of contemporary taste and confronting the viewer with topics rarely seen on TV at the time.

As the author publishes a new story collection, we rate the work that made his name – from his dazzling Booker winner to an account of the 2022 attack that nearly killed him

“It makes me want to hide behind the furniture,” Rushdie now says of his debut. It’s a science fiction story, more or less, but also indicative of the sort of writer Rushdie would become: garrulous, playful, energetic. The tale of an immortal Indian who travels to a mysterious island, it’s messy but charming, and the sense of writing as performance is already here. (Rushdie’s first choice of career was acting, and he honed his skill in snappy lines when working in an advertising agency.) Not a great book, but one that shows a great writer finding his voice, and a fascinating beginning to a stellar career.

Toxic male behaviour of David Szalay’s protagonist reflects real-world concerns about a ‘crisis of masculinity’

In the immediate aftermath of David Szalay’s book Flesh winning the Booker prize, one feature of the novel stood out: how often the protagonist utters the word “OK”.

The 500 times István grunts out the response is part of a sparse prose style through which the British-Hungarian Szalay gives the reader few insights into the inner workings of a man whose fortunes rise and fall.

Flesh by David Szalay (Vintage Publishing, £18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The author of The Employees goes back to 17th-century Denmark for an intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity

On 26 June 1621, in Copenhagen, a woman was beheaded – which was unusual, but only in the manner of her death. According to one historian, during the years 1617 to 1625, in Denmark a “witch” was burned every five days. The first time this happens in Danish author Olga Ravn’s fourth novel, the condemned woman is “tied to the ladder, and the ladder pushed into the bonfire”. Her daughter watches as she falls, her eye “so strangely orange from within. And then in the heat it explodes.”

The child is watched, in turn, by a wax doll who sees everything: everything in this scene, and everything everywhere, through all space and all the time since it was fashioned. It sees the worms burrowing through the soil in which it is buried; the streets of the world in which it was made. It inhabits the bodies that walked those streets: “And I was in the king’s ear, and I was in the king’s mouth, and I was in the king’s loose tooth and in the quicksilver of his liver, and did hear.”

Book publishing websites in Australia, the UK and New Zealand appear to be using fake testimonials and AI staff pages to lure aspiring writers into handing over their money

An aspiring Australian writer met an apparent scammer face-to-face before realising she may have become a victim of a suspicious international publishing venture.

Australia’s National Anti-Scam Centre is now investigating the case of a website luring people seeking a foothold in the increasingly crowded space of vanity and self-publishing. The Guardian has uncovered similar suspicious websites operating in the UK and New Zealand, as well as two others operating within Australia.

Friends, enemies and lovers animate more than 60 years of the author’s remarkable correspondence

John Updike had the mind of a middling middle-class postwar American male, and the prose style of a literary genius. Such a lord of language was he that even the notoriously grudging Vladimir Nabokov afforded him a meed of praise. A reviewer, musing on the disproportion between the style and content of Updike’s fiction, likened him to a lobster with one hugely overgrown claw. It was a comparison Updike was to remember – for all his bland urbanity, on display from start to finish in this mighty volume of his letters, he could be prickly, and did not take slights lightly.

As a novelist he aimed, as he once put it, to “give the mundane its beautiful due”. Apart from a few rare and in some cases ill-advised ventures into the exotic – the court at Elsinore, Africa, the future – his abiding subject was the quotidian life of “ordinary” Americans in the decades between the end of the second world war and the coming of a new technological age in the closing years of the 20th century.

Feeling overwhelmed by divisive opinions, endless rows and unreliable facts? Here’s how to weather the data storm

We all live in history. A lot of the problems that face us, and the opportunities that present themselves, are defined not by our own choices or even the specific place or government we’re living under, but by the particular epoch of human events that our lives happen to coincide with.

The Industrial Revolution, for example, presented opportunities for certain kinds of business success – it made some people very rich while others were exploited. If you’d known that was the name of your era, it would have given you a clue about what kinds of events to prepare for. So I’m suggesting a name for the era we’re living through: the Information Crisis.

Helen Fielding and Renée Zellweger gather in Leicester Square as a new bronze marks 30 years of the diary-writing everywoman who redefined the romcom heroine

Bridget Jones, Britain’s best-loved and most hapless romcom heroine, stands in a creased miniskirt and gaping cardie in the centre of London, clutching her diary and a pen. Alcohol units: 0, cigarettes: 0, calories: 0, weight: 31 stone – and, according to the actor Sally Phillips, “no intention of losing any of it”.

Phillips was in Leicester Square on Monday morning to unveil a life-size bronze of the comedy character, alongside Helen Fielding – who first cooked her up in a newspaper column 30 years ago, and whose novels have now been translated into more than 40 languages – and Renée Zellweger, star of the four Bridget Jones films (with a combined box office of $900m (£683m)).

You don’t need to be a fright flick aficionado to enjoy this smart and witty tale of a romantic weekend break going gruesomely wrong

It is certainly unusual to see in closeup an arrow fired into a naked scrotum before the title of a film has even been shown, but this is that rare film. The scrotum in question belongs to a man fleeing unclothed through the woods from an unseen assailant, together with an equally naked female companion who also comes swiftly to a sticky end. As opening salvoes go, it hits the spot, as it were.

Then the film proper begins. A couple arrive at a bougie rental home only to find themselves facing the ultimate millennial nightmare: you’ve shelled out your hand-earned cash on a place for the weekend but find another couple have also booked it. This is the problem of listings on multiple platforms! Or is something more sinister going on? (If the ballsack shish kebab didn’t tip you off, another clue lies in the fact that the movie is called Bone Lake, not Airbnb Clash.) Imagine the social boundary-pushing of recent horror Speak No Evil with characters from White Lotus season 2 using the set-up from Barbarian, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of how much fun this will all prove to be.

As his sequel to Wicked prepares to storm Christmas, the director talks about the dynamism of Grande and Cynthia Erivo – and why his Wizard of Oz riff is quite simply one of the greatest stories of our time

Let’s start with a quick recap on the first Wicked film. Its premise: what would the legend of Oz look like, told from the perspective of someone other than that cute but dozy blow-in, Dorothy? The wicked witch, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), is entirely green, and has therefore been ostracised since childhood. Glinda (Ariana Grande), the good witch, is everybody’s princess but, after a time, the two become best friends. I’ll skirt over how the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow come about, suffice to say that, in the film at least, their backstories make perfect and resonant sense (except for the Lion, but never mind). The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) is not a good guy – but is he a bad guy? The morals swirl, in an expertly handled way.

The first film left us at the point of discovery that Oz, far from being a magic paradise, was actually built on foundations of discrimination, oppression, enslavement and mendacity – or, if you like things simple, fascism. The fact that the slave-caste is the animal kingdom rather than a human out-group doesn’t make this opulent fantasia feel any less pointedly topical. “Any timeless story feels timely,” director Jon M Chu says, “because it’s about the human condition. When people become too powerful, what happens to the powerless? That cycle, unfortunately, challenges us every few generations, and maybe this is our moment. We’re the adults in the room now.”

Unimaginative British fable has a credible lead in Christine During, but otherwise it’s the movie equivalent of receiving socks as a present

Think of the most unimaginative, boring Christmas present you’ve ever been given – a pair of acrylic socks, for instance, or one of those suffocatingly perfumed talcum powders you can only buy in petrol stations. Now imagine the spirit of that gift transformed into a holiday-themed British feature film, and you’ll be close to approximating the dull drippiness that is 3 Wishes for Christmas. It’s got all the personality of a supermarket gift voucher. The only saving grace is that lead actor Christine During is sufficiently competent to make the insipid, sub-large language model dialogue sound moderately credible. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the rest of the cast, who seem to have been thrown to the wolves by incompetent direction and find themselves sometimes literally thrashing around, as if being torn limb from limb.

During plays Tessa, who writes an agony column for a magazine, although that bit of biography barely figures – which is quite typical of the script, a compilation of pointless plot points and stale tropes stolen from other Christmas-themed movies and literature. Thus Tessa splits up with her boring finance-bro boyfriend in a not early enough scene, decides to spend the holiday with her insufferably pert best friend Fiona (Katie Sheridan), and has a meet-cute en route with a good-looking but rude guy who turns out to be Fiona’s brother Sam (Jacob Anderton). Naturally they will fall in love, quarrel again and then … well, no spoilers. But it is a romcom.

A photographer’s road trip into the Californian desert takes an unexpected turn in director Joshua Erkman’s interesting feature debut

Director Joshua Erkman’s feature debut manages to deliver an impressively creepy horror exercise that’s also a bit of a send-up of horror conventions. At the same time, it feels like a weird dodge into borderline-abstraction and unknowable mystery that drains all the realism away, making this a mannered film-making exercise. But there’s no denying the level of craft on show, or the original way Erkman throws together practitioners of highfalutin art-world discourse and skeevy low-lifes, with bloody results. In generic terms, it definitely feels of a piece with other recent highbrow-meets-lowbrow scare-’em-ups, the kind of grad-school horror you might see in the queer-eyed I Saw the TV Glow, David Lowery’s stripped-down A Ghost Story, or director Ari Aster’s Hereditary. In other words: interesting for sure, but perhaps a bit pretentious for hardcore gorehounds.

In A Desert, we first meet photographer Alex (Kai Lennox) as he drives around the desiccated terrain of California’s Yucca Valley, listening to smooth contemporary jazz on his fancy SUV’s sound system and pulling over to take pictures of abandoned buildings. He shoots his images on a fancy 8x10 inch apparatus that uses photographic plates that need to be exposed for 10 second intervals. His subjects include disused cinemas and the ghost town remains of abandoned military bases – although in a voicemail he leaves for his wife Sam (Sarah Lind) he suggests he might shift over into portraits for a while. Clearly, he’s not especially interested in the people who live here, although when the trailer-trash-style couple (Zachary Ray Sherman and Ashley Smith) in the motel room next door come a-knocking, offering turpentine-tasting hooch and a chance to party, Alex is too polite/weak to resist.

Sofie Benoot’s film opens out from the film-maker’s medical problem to a diverting reflection on humankind’s deep roots in ancient minerals

The elegant, humorous, susurrating Welsh voice of Siân Phillips sets the keynote for this whimsical essay documentary from Belgian film-maker Sofie Benoot about the nature of rock and stone, and the mysterious interrelation between our bodies and the landmass of Earth.

Benoot’s starting point is the kidney stone that has just been removed from her body, an intriguingly smooth and worn pebble; it’s a personal event she assigns to her offscreen alter ego, voiced by Phillips. This quasi-fictional narrator musingly notes that once upon a time she provided the voice for nature documentaries; quite true, Phillips has indeed narrated some nature documentaries, which appears to be the reason why Benoot cast her.

Marissa Bode is the first disabled actor to play Nessarose, a key character in the stage turned film franchise – but has had to respond to online abuse

Disabled actor Marissa Bode, who plays the prominent role of Nessarose Thropp in the hit film musical Wicked and its forthcoming sequel Wicked: For Good, has called for improved representation for disabled performers in the entertainment industry – and specifically an end to what activists call “cripping up” – casting non-disabled actors in disabled character roles.

“I really hope my casting sets precedent,” says Bode, adding: “It’s just navigating a world and a system that we have just not been acknowledged in as we should be.” A recent study by the Rudderman Family Foundation found that only 21% of disabled characters on US TV between 2016 and 2023 were played by disabled actors.

Its 1981 New York premiere was a disaster but this told-in-reverse musical became a Tony award-winning hit with Daniel Radcliffe. The film version is a tear-jerking joy

I have made enough mistakes as a critic to feel mildly chuffed when a verdict is vindicated. In 1981 I wrote excitedly about a new Stephen Sondheim musical, Merrily We Roll Along, that I had seen in preview in New York; reviled by reviewers and shunned by the public, it then closed two weeks after opening. In 2023-24 the very same musical ran for a year on Broadway, won four Tony awards and was hailed by the critics. Fortunately a live performance of that Maria Friedman production was filmed and I would urge you to catch it when it’s released in cinemas next month.

I say “the very same musical” but that is not strictly accurate. Based on a 1934 play by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, it is still the same story, told in reverse chronological order, of dissolving relationships: a success-worshipping composer and movie producer, Franklin Shepard, looks back over his life and sees how time has eroded both his creative partnership with a dramatist, Charley, and their mutual friendship with a novelist, Mary.

Thikra: Night of Remembering is Akram Khan Company’s last touring show. Here, the choreographer and dancer’s collaborators recall how he motivated them

Nitin Sawhney, composer, collaborated on multiple projects with Khan, including Kaash (2002), Zero Degrees (2005) and Vertical Road (2010)

This madcap variety show sees its titular lead direct proceedings from her control desk. Rachel, her co-star sister and their mum explain what it reveals about disability in the UK

Rachel O’Mahony doesn’t give two hoots that her evolving stage production got five stars from the Guardian. The show may have won awards, had barnstorming reviews and made its audiences weep buckets, but Rachel’s own delight is what matters. As for anyone else who has the pleasure of watching? Rachel puts it perfectly. “Lucky you,” she says.

You see, this joyous, anarchic, different-every-time production has been tailored specifically, by Rachel’s younger sister Flo, to suit the tastes of 35-year-old Rachel, who has learning disabilities, loves Kylie and fart jokes, and is in total control of what happens on stage each night. It’s all in the show’s title: Perfect Show for Rachel.

Royal Opera House, London
In an engaging triple bill, a new work from Cathy Marston explores the emotional charge of Britten’s Violin Concerto, while works by Justin Peck and George Balanchine showcase the simple joy of dancing to great music

When choreographer Cathy Marston was commissioned to make a new one-act work for the Royal Ballet, she intended to create something abstract, just dancing to music – admittedly not the usual style of the woman who brought us Jane Eyre, Hamlet, Atonement and other narratives – but in the end the music she chose wouldn’t let her do it. Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto was written from 1938-39, his backdrop; the beginnings of the second world war, Britten – a pacifist – moving to the US with his lover Peter Pears, and the death of the composer’s mother. All these things have found their way into Marston’s piece, Against the Tide, and all for the better.

William Bracewell plays the unnamed protagonist, his dancing instinctive as ever, the whorls of his mind played out in the twisting and untangling of his body. Here come military men, with rigid demeanour and clenched fists, and Matthew Ball with satin shirt and seduction; there is Bracewell torn between duty, beauty and freedom. You can feel his torment, it reads like one long dark night of the soul.

Royal Court theatre, London
Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s drama toggles between digital and physical worlds as it traces a scholar’s grim compulsion

‘It’s not that deep,” Ani’s friend assures her. Who cares if she watches a lot of extreme pornography? But after the light is switched off, Ani can’t get through their impromptu sleepover without masturbating to porn on her phone. The friend wakes up next to her and exits in disgust.

The same scenario has already led Ani, a 30-year-old academic, to break up with her partner. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, she was using porn next to her boyfriend in bed. Fleabag darkly regaled us with her voracious YouPorn habit but Ani, despite her robust reasoning in their argument, is deeply troubled by her behaviour. So, too, is her father when Ani hides away in her old childhood bedroom with her laptop.

Bush theatre, London
Performed by an exceptional cast, Sophia’s Griffin’s debut play paints a vivid picture of men – and a system – in crisis

The heat rises slowly, and then suddenly reaches boiling point, in Sophia Griffin’s debut play. Set in a secure hospital in Birmingham – walled off from the rest of life – occupational therapist Naomi (Aimée Powell) starts hosting weekly Caribbean cooking classes. Believing in the meditative power of food, she hopes to engage the men with memories of home-cooked meals and maybe even provide a space for difficult conversations to flourish. But, with Ty, Leroy and Daniel’s simmering histories at play, the room can tip into conflict with one wrong step.

Over the course of the sessions, the men’s pasts gradually become less hazy. The youngest, Ty (a witty, bravado-infused performance from Corey Weekes), is desperate to get out and return to prison. Leroy (David Webber) has been on the ward for what feels like for ever and fears leaving as much as he longs for freedom. The newest arrival, Daniel (Darrel Bailey), just wants to get fixed quick and reconnect with his family. Griffin holds back the details of the characters’ offences until just the right moment, letting us get to know them first. When we finally hear snippets of them, it feels like a punch to the skull.

EFG Jazz festival, Royal Festival Hall, London
The pioneering 81-year-old vibes player, keyboardist and percussionist creates a controlled whirlwind of experimentation and excitement

Absolutely nothing about this set feels predictable: at 81, Mulatu Astatke is still pushing the boundaries of genre. Even on his farewell tour, there is no easing in, either. The father of Ethio-jazz and his band immediately play Tsome Diguwa as if conjuring a thunderstorm, which in turn crashes straight into Zèlèsègna Dèwèl, a piece written in the 4th-century Ethiopian tradition, its harmonic minor tonality sounding almost Arabic.

Astatke has a serious demeanour. Unsentimental, he speaks only to introduce songs or instruct the band like a schoolteacher. But he views his vibraphone with care and bewilderment, playing with intense familiarity yet almost as though discovering it for the first time. His fascination with his instrument holds the audience captive in turn. During Yèkèrmo Sèw – which fittingly translates to “a man of experience and wisdom” – Astatke’s solo fills the room, water-like in its shapeshifting.

Official Trump social media accounts have been using The Life of a Showgirl snippets to promote his agenda. Why has Swift, who once wanted ‘to be on the right side of history’, said nothing?

In the last two weeks, the Trump administration has used music from Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, in three posts on social media. The first, shared by the official White House account on TikTok, was a patriotic slide show of images set to lead single The Fate of Ophelia. As Swift sings “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes”, the video cuts to pictures of the US flag, President Trump, the vice-president, JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The second and third were posted by Team Trump, the official account for the Trump Campaign. One, set to Father Figure, riffs on the lyric “this empire belongs to me” with the caption “this empire belongs to @President Donald J Trump”, while the other, celebrating Melania Trump winning something called the Patriot of the year award, is soundtracked by Opalite.

The Trump administration has found itself in dicey waters for using popular music in the past. The White Stripes and the estate of Isaac Hayes have both attempted to sue the administration for using their music without permission, while artists including Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Abba and Foo Fighters have released statements demanding Trump stop using their songs at campaign rallies and public appearances. Most recently, Olivia Rodrigo condemned the administration after the official Department of Homeland Security and White House Instagram account used her song All-American Bitch on a video promoting its controversial deportation efforts (the song was later removed by Instagram).

Fuelled by a loathing of Trump, the war in Gaza and anger at ‘the same old chauvinistic crap’, the 75-year-old – who cut her teeth with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and more – has no plans to stop protesting

When I speak to Dee Dee Bridgewater, the jazz singer is preparing for a concert that evening in Des Moines, Iowa, performing classy selections from the Great American Songbook. But even though she has also recorded this material for her recent album Elemental, Bridgewater is not really in the mood. “I just don’t feel like it’s the time to be doing love songs and whimsical songs from the 1920s and 30s,” she says. “They’re beautiful, but there’s some kind of spirit and energy pushing me to sing songs saying: people, we have to protect our democracy.”

Bridgewater is one of American jazz’s foremost voices. Capable of crooning and confronting, the two-time Grammy winner has a career that spans six decades and has never stopped evolving. She cut her teeth sharing the stage with several of jazz’s greatest band leaders – Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon – before branching out into acting; singing pop and disco; and working out of France, the UK and Mali, always with a determination to create on her own terms.

As she prepares to release No Lube So Rude, her first album in a decade, the Canadian dance-punk icon will answer your questions

Whether crowdsurfing inside a giant condom or singing alongside a vulva-headed dancer, Peaches has left us with some indelible on-stage images over the years – and there are set to be a few new ones as she goes on tour and releases her first album in a decade. As she does so, she’ll join us to answer your questions.

Peaches, AKA Merrill Nisker, emerged from Toronto’s underground scene in the late 1990s – her peers included Feist, her flatmate above a sex shop – but really came to fame in the early 00s after she moved to Berlin. Her debut EP, Lovertits, was a cherished item on the era’s electroclash scene but it was the a joyous, profane dance-punk track Fuck the Pain Away, from her debut album The Teaches of Peaches, that really took her into the mainstream.

As he moves into film production with the thriller Game, the musician – also known for Beak> – answers your questions on Myspace rappers, Bristol greats and whether Portishead will ever make new music

What made you decide to make a film, Game, and can you tell us a little bit about it? Zoe2025
As I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself having more film ideas than musical ones. Having an independent label, Invada Records, I wondered if I could actually make a film. I was at school with [co-writer and actor] Marc Bessant, I’ve worked with [director] John Minton for 20 years and I met [co-writer] Rob Williams – a scriptwriter for Judge Dredd and stuff – when he moved to Portishead [Somerset]. The idea of someone trapped in an upside down car comes from JG Ballard’s Concrete Island. Initially it was gonna be a horror film where the character was attacked by rabid dogs, but instead we set it during the end of rave culture. I immediately thought of Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods for the role of a poacher and it turned out that his dad had rabbited. He’s brilliant in it.

How easy was it to recreate the sense of the 90s rave scene on film? k4ren123
There are only a couple of sequences, but we wanted to capture the way the rave scene went from free festivals to something more corporate where the drugs were really organised. All my mates in Portishead [the town] were ravers. I wasn’t. I went to a couple, but for the film I looked at lots of old footage and bought most of the clothes for the film on eBay. Nineties rave wasn’t fluorescent outfits. They were ordinary kids in street gear, so I’d think: what kind of trainers were they wearing?

(Young)
After 2018’s mellow Honey, the beloved Swede’s heady comeback pairs production worthy of Daft Punk and Moroder with deep romantic realism

At the end of last year, during her triumphant gig at the O2, Charli xcx brought Robyn out onstage. In a sense, it was just the latest in a series of guest appearances on the Brat tour: a string of collaborators from the album and its ensuing remixes – Lorde, Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan and Addison Rae among them – had turned up at different shows to perform their parts live. But as well as contributing her verse to their remix of 360, Robyn also took centre stage, performing her peerless 2010 single Dancing on My Own. Released when at least some of Charli xcx’s audience were still in nappies, it didn’t sound remotely like a throwback even in the context of a gig based around one of 2024’s most acclaimed and agenda-setting pop albums: the star of the show’s willingness to cede the spotlight to her felt like evidence of Robyn’s influence over contemporary pop.

You can see why the Swedish singer-songwriter carries so much clout among pop stars of the mid-2020s. When she opened an album with a track called Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do, she wasn’t joking: after launching as a 90s teen-pop star produced by Max Martin, she rejected the usual strictures placed on female pop – walking away from not one but two major label deals due to lack of artistic control – and seemed intent on following a more idiosyncratic, complex, messy path. She never saw being in the centre of mainstream pop as antithetical to making music with depth, or that touched on contentious issues. Despite the worldwide success of her debut, Robyn Is Here, her second album, My Truth, went unreleased outside Sweden because her US-based label baulked at Giving You Back, a song about an abortion she’d had in 1998: when asked to remove the song, Robyn refused.

He played china mugs, bells, rattles and car horns for everyone from Alfred Hitchcock to Benjamin Britten – and once got Laurence Olivier to bang a broomstick. We go behind the scenes of a Radio 3 celebration

Saturday night and the Britten Studio at Snape Maltings is filling up with 300 chattering punters. We are about to record a show that will go out “as live” on BBC Radio 3. This is a one-shot wonder: for one night only, in this drama-documentary, we are exploring the work of percussionist James Blades. Our setup neatly combines the most stressful elements of a live show, plus the key aspect of audience participation which we have – obviously – no proper chance to rehearse. Nerves are fraying. How did it get to this? And who is James Blades anyway?

Born in 1901, Blades was one of the great percussionists of the 20th century, whose life spanned the century itself – he died in May 1999. His blazing talent combined with a startling capacity for hard work took him to the top of his profession and later made him a mentor to music stars as varied as rock drummer Carl Palmer, percussionist Evelyn Glennie and a young Simon Rattle.

(Château de Versailles Spectacles)
Vincent Dumestre and his radiant ensemble bring theatrical flair and exquisite detail to a joyous celebration of England’s patron saint of the baroque

It’s heartening to see European ensembles exploring the work of Henry Purcell, Britain’s very own baroque national treasure. This album, by crack French ensemble Le Poème Harmonique and conductor Vincent Dumestre, centres on one of his absolute masterpieces: Hail! Bright Cecilia, a lavish, celebratory ode to the patron saint of music.

Composed in 1692, its spirited text is full of allusions to musical instruments, including the idea that St Cecilia invented the organ. Purcell’s fertile imagination responded with a dazzling array of illustrative arias, duets and choruses full of sprightly violins, cooing flutes and martial kettledrums. With added harp in the continuo and richly characterful woodwind, Dumestre leads one of the most luxuriant accounts on disc, full of felicitous detail and theatrical flair.

Bertrand Chamayou, Leif Ove Andsnes
(Erato)
Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou find lyrical intimacy and finely tuned emotional balance in Schubert’s late masterpieces for four hands

Schubert’s late works for piano four hands have attracted some starry pairings over the years, from Benjamin Britten and Sviatoslav Richter to Radu Lupu and Murray Perahia. Pulling them off requires an affinity for the composer’s distinctively private soundworld and a willingness to share a single instrument, often requiring a different way of thinking about the mechanics of making music.

Leif Ove Andsnes and Bertrand Chamayou are thoughtful musicians, and it’s immediately apparent from these affectionately searching accounts that they possess an emotional synergy. The great F minor Fantasia finds the Norwegian spinning seamless lyrical lines over the Frenchman’s cushioned bass. Dynamics are impeccably sculpted; the central Largo is weighty with perfectly balanced trills throughout. They can be playful, too, though their instincts turn inwards, probing the music’s spirit. The return of the poignant main theme is a heart-stopper.

Wigmore Hall, London
In a deftly curated programme, youthful compositions rubbed shoulders with music from her most productive period, the 1920s

Among the plethora of female composers finally receiving their due in recent years, Rebecca Clarke stands out for sheer quality and consistency of inspiration. Born in 1886, she studied with Stanford, worked with Vaughan Williams and, as a virtuoso violist, became one of the first professional female orchestral players in London. Relocating to the United States, her output declined, but her spirited chamber music and more recently her rediscovered songs, have proved fertile ground for today’s performers.

In a deftly curated programme, the culmination of a Wigmore Hall Clarke study day, youthful compositions rubbed shoulders with music from her most productive period, the 1920s. Ailish Tynan opened proceedings, her soaring soprano and snappy diction illuminating songs that suggested the influence of Vaughan Williams. Ravel, in Orientalist mode, hovered over settings of Chinese poetry, perfect material for Kitty Whately’s fresh, flaming mezzo-soprano with its cushioned lower register. Ashley Riches’ warm baritone embraced Clarke’s memorable melody for Yeats’ Down by the Salley Gardens while raising a smile in The Aspidistra, a melodramatic song about the calculated murder of a pot plant.

Activision; PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
With a deafening onslaught of massive shootout set-pieces in exotic locations, an evolving campaign mode and excellent multiplayer offerings, this maximalist instalment of crazed carnage is a hoot

It seems like an anachronism now, in this age of live service “forever games”, that the annual release of a new Call of Duty title is still considered a major event. But here is Black Ops 7, a year after its direct predecessor, and another breathless bombard of military shooting action. This time it is set in a dystopian 2035 where a global arms manufacturer named the Guild claims to be the only answer to an apocalyptic new terrorist threat – but are things as clearcut as they seem?

The answer, of course, is a loudly yelled “noooo!” Black Ops is the paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed cousin to the Modern Warfare strand of Call of Duty games, a series inspired by 70s thrillers such as The Parallax View and The China Syndrome, and infused with ’Nam era concerns about rogue CIA agents and bizarre psy-ops. The campaign mode, which represents just a quarter of the offering this year, is a hallucinogenic romp through socio-political talking points such as psychopathic corporations, hybrid warfare, robotics and tech oligarchies. The result is a deafening onslaught of massive shootout set-pieces in exotic locations, as the four lead characters – members of a supercharged spec-ops outfit – are exposed to a psychotropic drug that makes them relive their worst nightmares. Luckily, they do so with advanced weaponry, cool gadgets and enough buddy banter to destabilise a medium-sized rogue nation. It is chaotic, relentless and stupidly pleasurable, especially if you play in co-operative mode with three equally irresponsible pals.

Announced in 2020 by the Game Awards as an inclusive programme for the industry’s next generation, the Future Class initiative has now been discontinued. Inductees describe clashes with organisers and a lack of support from the beginning

Video games have long struggled with diversification and inclusivity, so it was no surprise when the Game Awards host and producer Geoff Keighley announced the Future Class programme in 2020. Its purpose was to highlight a cohort of individuals working in video games as the “bright, bold and inclusive future” of the industry.

Considering the widespread reach of the annual Keighley-led show, which saw an estimated 154m livestreams last year, Future Class felt like a genuine effort. Inductees were invited to attend the illustrious December ceremony, billed as “gaming’s Oscars”, featured on the official Game Awards website, and promised networking opportunities and career advancement advice. However, the programme reportedly struggled from the start. Over the last couple of years, support waned. Now, it appears the Game Awards Future Class has been wholly abandoned.

The Fortnite tie-in is only the latest in a longstanding relationship between The Simpsons and video games, showing how the hit sitcom has survived as a cultural icon

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And so Fortnite has done it again. Over the past five years, developer Epic Games maintained the relevance and awareness of its ageing online shooter by churning out pop culture collaborations, from Marvel to John Wick to Sabrina Carpenter. For limited periods, players get to take part in the game as their favourite movie characters and music artists, an arrangement that provides refreshed audience numbers for the game – and a tidy revenue stream for the brands.

Now it’s the turn of The Simpsons. This month, the Fortnite island has become a miniature Springfield, complete with popular characters and well-known locations. If you want to play as Homer and shoot up Moe’s Tavern, you can. If you want to take Bart to Kwik-E-Mart for a squishee, go ahead. Everywhere you look there’s a fun little Simpsons Easter egg, from the fact that the Battlebus (which delivers players on to the island) is now driven by Otto to the presence of Duffman, Seymour Skinner’s steamed hams and drooling aliens.

Borough Yards, London
This immersive riot of giant ferns, vine-tangled tree-trunks and sun-struck foliage dissolves in front of your eyes, but leaves you none the wiser about the natural world

Is it me, or is it hot in here? A jungle floats in the darkness on three big screens. Each depicts a riot of giant ferns, vine-tangled tree-trunks and sun-struck foliage in layered, dank profusion. With their jumbles of weathered rock, mossy wetness and tropical vegetation, you can lose yourself in these scenes. But, as I look, mist wafts over a patch of dense greenery as if someone out-of-shot were making with the plant spray.

I’m reminded of those unconvincing jungles in movies and on TV, where the plants have been trucked-in from some garden centre warehouse and arranged on set. Only the camera angles and clever editing stop us from recognising the artifice of it all. In the foreground on one of the screens, you can see rivulets crossing what appears to be a floor of waterproof matting. A small puddle is also forming at my feet. Either the film is leaking, though that seems unlikely, or water is dripping from the ceiling. Through the day, I’m told, the water slowly inundates the sheets of metal that cover portions of the floor, but I arrived too early for the flood.

From flood protection and encouraging wildlife to fixing doors and reducing fuel bills, a new initiative aims to empower residents and make their homes more comfortable

Link Road is home to an unassuming row of Victorian terrace houses in Edgbaston, but inside one of these two up, two downs, a domestic revolution is happening.

At No 33 Link Road, a property bought by community group Civic Square and named Retrofit House, it’s open week. Events include a series of talks, classes and performances – there’s a timetable pinned by the front door so you know when to head to the back bedroom to learn about biomaterials or into the garden for a workshop on mending doors.

The Frattini Bivouac is part of a Bergamo gallery’s experiment to ‘think like a mountain’. But in the thin air of the Italian alps, curatorial ideas are challenged in more ways than one

At 2,300 metres above sea level, Italy’s newest – and most remote – cultural outpost is visible long before it becomes reachable. A red shard on a ridge, it looks first like a warning sign, and then something more comforting: a shelter pitched into the wind.

The structure stands on a high ridge in the municipality of Valbondione, along the Alta Via delle Orobie, exposed to avalanches and sudden weather shifts. I saw it from above, after taking off from the Rifugio Fratelli Longo, near the village of Carona – a small mountain municipality a little over an hour’s drive from GAMeC, Bergamo’s Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea – the closest access point I was given for the site visit.

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London
Is the pranksy artist’s latest show a worrying comment about Britain’s discarded rope problem – or a joke at the expense of the buy-anything art world?

How long is a piece of string? David Shrigley can’t answer that, but he can tell you how much it weighs: 10 tons, apparently. His latest installation is literally an exhibition of 10 tons of old rope, accumulated by him over months, and left in towering mounds in this swanky gallery in London’s Mayfair. Most of it is marine rope, destined for landfill. It’s hard to recycle this stuff, it seems, and there’s an endless supply of it dumped around the world. So Shrigley scooped up as much of it as he could find, piled it up and put a massive price tag on it.

The work can be yours for £1m. And that’s the point of the show: this is literally money for old rope. It’s not that deep – it’s just an idea taken to its logical conclusion, an idiom taken too far, a pun taken too literally.

The American takes strange film stills and turns them into monumental watercolours, full of Catholic guilt and paranoia – and it’s made him the most talked-about painter of the moment

‘All paintings are in their own way accusations and confessions,” says Joseph Yaeger. “It’s what Polygrapher is about.” This is the title of the artist’s new exhibition, his first since joining the prestigious London gallery Modern Art in 2024, for whom it marks the opening of new premises in St James’s.

Honesty is important to Yaeger, whose upbringing in the US in Helena, a town that he says ambitiously calls itself the capital of Montana, was as decent as it was unremarkable. “We’d sit down for dinner together every night, we’d go to church every Sunday, we’re polite almost to a fault, and traditional in almost all senses of the word.”

Hambling and Lucas join forces, Roger Fry gets a rare show and an aerial daredevil captures stormy Scotland – all in your weekly dispatch

Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas
These two very different artists became friends after meeting at the Colony Room (where else?) and now show together in an encounter of British art generations.
• Sadie Coles HQ, London, 20 November to 24 January

After serving time in jail, actor Allison Mack opens up about her experiences in a group with links to sex trafficking. Plus, a deep dive into Jane Austen

Margot Robbie’s company to make movie based on Northern Ireland academics’ stories of poverty and prison

It started as a trawl of dusty archives for an academic project about female Irish emigrants in Canada and the US by two history professors, a worthy but perhaps niche topic for research.

The subjects, after all, were human flotsam from Ireland’s diaspora whose existence was often barely recorded, let alone remembered.