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      From Dubai to the Parthenon: the ‘strawberry moon’ around the world - in pictures

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 12 June

    The strawberry moon, so named because it traditionally denoted the start of strawberry picking in the northern hemisphere was viewable on 10-11 June

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      ‘Prison was the first place we felt sisterhood’: six women return to the ruins of Holloway

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 12 June

    In an astonishing new documentary, former inmates go back to the cells that once held them – and reflect on what led them there in the first place. The result is a powerful indictment of our justice system

    The directors of Holloway use a simple but powerful visual device to demonstrate how badly the British prison system is failing the women it incarcerates. Towards the end of their eponynmous documentary, six former inmates are invited to play a version of Grandmother’s Footsteps in the chapel of the deserted ex-prison, where they have been filming for five days.

    They begin lined up against the wall and a voice tells them: “Step forward if you grew up in a chaotic household.” All six women step forward, before being instructed: “Step forward if you experienced domestic violence growing up.” Again, they move ahead in unison. “Step forward if somebody in your household has experienced drug use. Step forward if you grew up in a household where there wasn’t very much money. Step forward if a member of your family has been to prison …”

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      Confessions of a Parent Killer review – a grisly tale of the murderer who lived with her mum and dad’s corpses

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 12 June

    This look at Virginia McCullough tells a deeply strange story. Unfortunately, it also leaves the viewer in suspense about her motive for so long it feels horrifically manipulative

    Well, what do you think a 90-minute documentary entitled Confessions of a Parent Killer is going to be about? That’s right, well done! It’s the story of a murder by an (adult) child of her parents . Virginia – Ginny – McCullough killed her mother, Lois, and father, John, and confessed immediately to police when they raided her home in 2023 that she had done so four years previously. The twist was that she had been living with their bodies ever since. “She was weird at school,” says a childhood friend. “But not ‘kill your parents and hide the bodies’ weird.”

    You can probably tell from such unimpeachably phlegmatic commentary that this case occurred in England. Great Baddow, Essex, to be exact, and the film paints a portrait of quintessential small-town, almost-rural life in these sceptred isles that has gone unchanged for generations and, you suspect, will survive for many more.

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      Stormzy takes first acting role as he launches film production company

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 12 June

    After music, publishing, sports and philanthropy, rapper expands into film-making with lead role in Big Man, a short film premiering on YouTube

    After conquering the charts , Glastonbury’s Pyramid stage and launching his own publishing imprint , Stormzy is taking his first steps into the world of movies with starring in a short film about the travails of an ex-rapper.

    Big Man will be made by the rap star’s own production company Merky Films in association with Apple, and feature Stormzy – in a sizable wig – as the lead character Tenzman, “a former rap star now navigating a restless and uncertain chapter of his life”.

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      Whether wistful or euphoric, Brian Wilson made pop’s most overwhelmingly beautiful music

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 11 June • 1 minute

    He was the Beach Boys’ resident genius, seeping melancholy into even peppy teenybopper hits. Beyond all the myths about his life, that brilliance is still intoxicating

    It’s fair to say that no one who bought the Beach Boys debut single in 1961 would have realised they were in the presence of genius. Surfin’ sounded exactly like what it was: one of dozens of cheap, hastily-recorded singles released on a tiny independent label to cash in on the burgeoning craze for surf music, albeit a regionally-successful example of type. You might easily have expected to never hear of the band who made it again.

    But the 19-year-old Brian Wilson was determined – he was the taskmaster that had relentlessly drilled his unwilling younger brothers Carl and Dennis into learning to harmonise – and a quick learner. The leap in quality between Surfin’ and its 1962 follow-up Surfin’ Safari was striking. The leap between Surfin’ Safari and Wilson’s glorious re-write of Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen, Surfin’ USA – released nine months later – was staggering. Surfin’ USA was a pivotal record in the Beach Boys’ career, the moment where they began selling the world an idealised notion of Californian youth as a carefree, sun-kissed paradise of beauty, athleticism and unending material luxury. It was set to music that was still essentially primitive – three chords; guitars, bass and drums with only a brief splash of reedy organ for colour – but so thick with beautifully arranged harmony vocals, it felt weirdly sumptuous.

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      Flight 149: Hostage of War review – a tale so staggering you couldn’t write it

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 11 June • 1 minute

    This excellent documentary tells the tale of a BA plane’s Kuwait stopover … just as Saddam Hussein invaded. It’s a crucial tale of a four-month nightmare that is barely believable

    If it were a work of fiction, the story of Flight 149 would probably be deemed too horrifying – or too unbelievable – for television. Indeed, as a documentary interspersed with dramatic reconstructions, at points it is almost unbearable to watch. But it is a crucial piece of work: a one-off film that goes deep into a bizarre and increasingly hideous ordeal to ask how and why it happened.

    On 2 August 1990, a British Airways plane carrying nearly 400 passengers and crew from London to Kuala Lumpur touched down for a scheduled stopover in Kuwait. Those on board knew nothing of the unfolding Iraqi invasion of the country and the brutality Saddam Hussein was inflicting on his neighbours (this would, of course, soon lead to the Gulf war ). British Airways maintains that it, too, was unaware of what was taking place, while the British government said it didn’t know what was happening until after the plane had landed. Later, it would emerge that it had, in fact, received information before the plane had reached the terminal, but that it wasn’t shared with the airline .

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      Harris Yulin, character actor and Broadway star, dies at 88

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 11 June

    Actor had over 100 credits including Scarface, Training Day, Rush Hour 2, Frasier, Ozark and Clear and Present Danger

    Harris Yulin, a character actor with more than 100 film and TV credits, has died at the age of 88.

    According to Deadline , his death was announced by his family and his manager. He died on 10 June of a cardiac arrest in New York City.

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      ‘Absolutely shocking’: Netflix documentary examines how the Titan sub disaster happened

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 11 June

    New film Titan: The OceanGate Disaster looks back at the many bad decisions that led to the devastating 2023 tragedy

    If you were sentient in the summer of 2023, you probably remember the feverish speculation, vicarious horror, snap consternation and armchair sleuthing after the disappearance of the submersible called Titan during a commercial voyage to the wreck of the Titanic. The Titan sub disaster was inescapable for weeks as the story evolved from critical rescue mission – the best-case scenario being a mechanical failure deep in the North Atlantic with 96 hours of oxygen for the five passengers, which you better believe became a countdown clock on cable news – to tragic recovery operation.

    The sub, it turned out, had imploded at 3,300 meters beneath the surface, 90 minutes into a dive that was supposed to reach 3,800 meters deep. All five passengers – British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and submersible owner Stockton Rush – were killed instantly.

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      Twelve of Brian Wilson’s greatest songs – from surf to psychedelia and beyond

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian • 11 June

    Elaborating classic pop and doo-wop into divinely beautiful and inimitable hitmaking, these are some of the late musician’s most unmistakable masterpieces

    Brian Wilson, visionary creative spirit for the Beach Boys, dies aged 82

    Although co-written with Gary Usher, this reflective hymn to isolation was pure Brian autobiography, conceived as the pressures of pop success loomed. “I had a room I thought of as my kingdom,” Wilson said, “somewhere you could lock out the world.” The domain in question was the Wilson family’s music room where Brian slept “right beside the piano”. Part-inspired by the Charms’ 1956 doo-wop hit Ivory Tower, which the Wilson brothers sang themselves to sleep with, In My Room sonically recreates Brian’s feelings of sanctuary by blending his brothers’ sweet-sad harmonies with finger cymbals, harp glissandi and Santo & Johnny-style Sleep Walk guitar. Soothing yet eerie, the song spoke to the nation of 60s teenagers whose only refuge was their bedroom, and whose worries and fears all waited for them outside that door.

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