Disney’s controversial live-action remake was proportionally more successful in ‘red’ states that vote Republican than those voting Democrat

Dogged by politically inspired controversy for months, Disney’s new version of Snow White recorded a disappointing $43m (£33.3m) on its first weekend at the North American box office, the lowest figures to date for one of the studio’s recent wave of live-action remakes of its classic animated films. However, despite the stream of criticism over its so-called “woke” credentials, figures reveal that it is proportionally more successful in “red” states that vote Republican than those voting Democrat.

Overall, Snow White’s figures are well down on what Disney may have hoped for; the previously worst performing remake was the Tim Burton-directed Dumbo, which took $45m on its opening weekend in 2019, and finished with a worldwide box-office take of $353m. In contrast, remade films such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King all took over $1bn worldwide.

He was in one of the biggest groups in the world – all without playing a note. As the last surviving Monkee turns 80, he remembers 60s fame – and what happened when the band broke free

In 1965, Micky Dolenz was an architecture student and jobbing actor in Los Angeles, doing the rounds of auditions for TV pilots. As a 10-year-old he had played the lead in a TV series called Circus Boy, but the former child star began to notice something odd about the jobs his agent was now sending him to: every one was for a series “about kids in a band”. He says: “One was called The Happeners, about a little folk trio like Peter, Paul and Mary. One was about a surfing band like the Beach Boys. Another was about a big family folk ensemble. Something was in the air, obviously, because of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, Motown. Young people, who had disposable income, were being targeted.”

None of those shows got made but a fourth audition proved more fruitful: it called for “folk’n’roll musician/singers … four insane boys” who looked as if they might hang around a hip Sunset Strip coffee shop called Ben Frank’s . Dolenz got a leading role, happily acquiescing to learn to play drums. “It was kind of the same as when I was in Circus Boy and they told me I had to learn to ride an elephant – ‘Great! When do I start?’”

Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardif
The pianist captured the vast dynamic contrasts of Schubert’s sonatas; and her fine playing of William Byrd was a refreshing foil

Two Schubert sonatas were the main works framing Mishka Rushdie Momen’s programme in the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama’s Steinway series. Given that both were in the minor mode – the A minor, D784 and the C minor, D958 – together they constituted quite a serious, heavyweight affair for a Sunday morning recital.

A pianist of graceful poise and sensitivity, Momen has a highly fluent technique that allowed everything to carry well in this acoustic. And, despite seeming a slight slip of a thing, to use an old-fashioned phrase, in these sonatas she showed that she could unleash considerable power in Schubert’s outbursts of high-volume dramatic tension, sometimes shocking in their immediacy. At the other extreme, her pianissimo was often pianississimo, so that lyrical lines, rather than quietly singing out, sounded understated and as a result curiously underwhelming. It was in the mercurial finale of the A minor sonata and the lilting, dance-like F major theme with its chromatic edge, poignant and piquant at every appearance, that Momen captured most expressively the happy/sad ambivalence of this composer’s musical makeup.

The cast of the new BBC show explain how they have given hard-hitting content a fun, relatable and colourful spin to actively encourage teenagers to make good life choices

In a modern academy secondary school in a deprived part of Leeds, adults wrangle a group of children into their places and a hush descends, before a director calls “Action!”

It’s a Tuesday in May – but it is not a school day. The kids have come in during the holidays to be extras in a new BBC comedy drama, Crongton, set on a fictional housing estate.

‘I had no idea I’d get so wet. I was in water for a month. It was kind of wild. For the storm scenes, they were dumping it down on us from towers. There were big-ass waves flying everywhere’

I’d always wanted to be killed in a movie by something big that was chasing me. I missed out on my death scene in Jurassic Park because a hurricane destroyed the set in Hawaii, so I never got to go down and get eaten by a velociraptor. When Renny Harlin told me he was making a horror movie with killer sharks, and that I was going to be the first person to die, I said: “Great!” It was a good idea – once he’d killed me, it meant any character’s life was up for grabs.

The director was discussing the row over Adrien Brody’s AI-enhanced Hungarian accent, saying ‘we mess with actors’ voices all the time’

David Cronenberg has suggested the AI controversy over Adrien Brody’s Hungarian accent in The Brutalist was an issue manufactured by the campaign of a rival Oscar film.

Cronenberg was speaking at the London Soundtrack festival alongside composer Howard Shore, and in remarks reported by the Hollywood Reporter, said that film-makers “mess with actors’ voices all the time”. Cronenberg said: “There was a discussion about Adrien Brody … [and] apparently they used artificial intelligence to improve his accent. I think it was a campaign against The Brutalist by some other Oscar nominees. It’s very much a Harvey Weinstein kind of thing, though he wasn’t around.”

The art deco former theatre escaped demolition, but has been closed since its recent £50m renovation

In many ways, it was the kind of marketing that money simply could not buy. Bradford Live, a new 3,900-capacity, city-centre entertainment venue, was splashed over the pages of local newspapers, made the subject of Facebook groups and even afforded national headlines . Unfortunately, it was for the wrong reasons.

The exceptionally well-restored West Yorkshire concert hall was brimming with possibilities, but was unable to open in November as planned because there was no operator in place to run it.

A blockbuster production of the Shakespeare tragedy might boast Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal but it’s sparked a debate over excessive pricing

How much would you pay to be in the same room as Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal , watching them work? Is that price in the mid-hundreds of dollars? And would you double it to nearly a thousand for a slightly better seat?

The 15-week limited Broadway run of William Shakespeare’s Othello , featuring one of our greatest living actors in the title role (and another, pretty damn good actor as Iago), is betting that at least some people would. Orchestra-level advance tickets to the show run between $216 and $921, depending on where you sit (those $216 tickets, more in line with what a less starry straight play might charge, are at the far side of the row, which at least means you’re getting a slightly lesser chance of catching Covid or the flu alongside your mild discount). It’s the latest innovation in live-theater pricing, where you no longer need to visit a scalper to get price-gouged. But if you do peruse the second-hand sites, you could fork over that same grand to see the revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr – an intriguing cast to be sure, albeit all a bit further down the list of greatest living actors than Washington.

After 67 years and many wild incidents etched on Britain’s collective memory, the world’s longest-running children’s TV show will stop going out live. Will it ever go viral again?

Life has changed beyond all recognition over the last 67 years. The way we live, the way we communicate, the things we eat; if you were to grab someone from 1958 and bring them forward in time to 2025, the sheer scale of change would blow their minds. Except, perhaps, for one thing. Everything else might be unrecognisable, but Blue Peter has always been broadcast live. Until now.

It has been reported that the last live episode of Blue Peter has aired, ending a tradition that has endured for nearly seven decades. It isn’t the end of Blue Peter, which will continue, albeit in a prerecorded format, but it is the end of an era. The show may be an institution, but even the longest-running children’s programme in the world isn’t immune to change.