Seeing falsehoods everywhere is as damaging as believing too much. Our focus should be on helping people interpret information better

On 30 October 1938, a US radio station broadcast a dramatisation of HG Wells’s apocalyptic novel The War of the Worlds. Some listeners, so we’re told, failed to realise what they had tuned into; reports soon emerged of panicked audiences who had mistaken it for a news bulletin. A subsequent academic study estimated that more than a million people believed they were experiencing an actual Martian invasion.

A startling example of how easily misinformation can take hold, perhaps. But the story is not all it appears to be. Despite oft-repeated claims, the mass panic almost certainly didn’t happen . In national radio audience surveys, only 2% reported listening to anything resembling The War of the Worlds at the time of the broadcast. Those who did seemed to be aware that it was fiction. Many referred to “the play” or its narrator Orson Welles, with no mention of a news broadcast. It turned out that the academic analysis had misinterpreted listener accounts of being frightened by the drama as panic about a real-life invasion.

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Talk show host, who received widespread acclaim for his debut earlier this month, will resume the reins at next year’s Academy Awards on 15 March

Conan O’Brien is to return as host of the Oscars ceremony in 2026 after a successful first stint earlier this month.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), the body that organises the Oscars, announced in a statement they were “thrilled” that O’Brien was appearing again, along with TV show producers Jeff Ross and Mike Sweeney and executive producers Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan.

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A hugely influential novelist and critic, Solstad won the Norwegian Critics prize three times, and his work was translated by Haruki Murakami

Dag Solstad, a towering figure of Norwegian letters admired by literary greats around the world, has died aged 83.

Known for prose combining existential despair, political subjects and a droll sense of humour, Solstad won the Norwegian critics prize for literature an unprecedented three times.

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The Stranger Things star joining the cast of the superhero sequel is a breath of fresh air in a musty Marvel Cinematic Universe that keeps resurrecting the old guard

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is in a somewhat peculiar spot at the moment. Faced with a nagging sense of superhero fatigue and the dawning horror that audiences might actually be yearning for something new, supremo Kevin Feige’s response has been to – yep – bring back Robert Downey Jr , the guy who kicked this whole thing off in the first place (but whose character Iron Man was killed off in Avengers: Endgame with all the finality of a Viking funeral.)

RDJ will ostensibly be playing Doctor Doom in 2026’s Avengers: Doomsday, but there’s every chance this particular take on the Latverian tyrant ends up being a multiversal variant of Tony Stark, a version of Kang who decided that being a dictator in green armour was a better gig than getting repeatedly recast, or perhaps a resurrected Loki variant who just wanted an excuse to wear an even more dramatic cape. Either way, the actor’s return to the multiverse is only exciting in the way that re-releasing Endgame in cinemas again would be. It’s certainly not the kind of casting that hints at a changing of the guard, or the potential for Marvel to be reaching out to a new generation of filmgoers.

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Actor-rapper will release project on 28 March, including the song Beautiful Scars which makes reference to his infamous Oscars slap

Will Smith is to release his first album in 20 years later this month, as the actor continues to rebuild his career following his assault on Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards .

Writing on Instagram, he said the album Based on a True Story would be released on 28 March, adding: “Been working on this project for a minute and I’m itchin’ to get it out to y’all”.

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One is the master of gruesome horror, the other is the composer who scored his most famous films. They sit down to discuss their 46-year collaboration, and the unlikely source of their darkest, most disturbing inspiration

What would having sex in a car crash sound like, as music? What about a gynaecological exam performed by identical twins, or a man’s transmogrification into a grotesque human-insectoid hybrid? These are just some of the challenges faced, over more than 40 years and upwards of a dozen films, by the composer Howard Shore as part of his long collaboration with the director David Cronenberg. Shore, 78, may have won three Oscars for the magisterial sweep of his Lord of the Rings score, but it is his work on the 81-year-old Cronenberg’s notorious body-horror movies, from The Fly to Dead Ringers and Crash, that is most indelible. Those last two films will be screening this month as part of a wider tribute to Shore’s work at the London Soundtrack festival, where the composer will appear with his director-collaborator for an onstage conversation. Ahead of that encounter and the release of their next collaboration, The Shrouds , the pair sat down to talk about their long, bloody body of work.

You’re both from Toronto , but how did your paths first cross?
Howard Shore We had multiple friends in common, and we were introduced by [artist] Stephen Zeifman, another one of us Toronto men. But I’d already seen David around town on his motorcycle, a gorgeous Ducati. I’d see him driving around in this beautiful leather motorcycle outfit. As a kid, 15 or 16, you’d notice someone like that rolling around your neighbourhood.

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Palestinian experts and British archaeologists say more than two-thirds of heritage, cultural and archaeological sites in Gaza have been damaged

Hamouda al-Dahda stands in the ruins of Pasha Palace in Gaza City, where before the war the golden limestone walls of the 800-year-old building towered above him, the gardens shaded visitors, and the cool vaulted halls held hundreds of priceless historical artefacts.

“The palace was like a small paradise on Earth. Now, there is no life here at all and anyone who comes is sad. They can remember what it once was,” the 40-year-old museum director says.

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The latest comfort movie recommendation in an ongoing series is a reminder of Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner’s landmark romantic comedy

There’s not a dull moment in When Harry Met Sally , Nora Ephron and Rob Reiner’s 1989 classic, which has become the apotheosis of the romcom. Every detail in the film is to be savoured: the golden leaves of Central Park. Billy Crystal ’s apartment. Meg Ryan’s glasses. The sweaters! Oh, the sweaters!

It’s not exactly a groundbreaking choice, so much so that I’m almost embarrassed to call it my “ feelgood movie ”. Calling When Harry Met Sally a perfect comfort film is like calling pizza the perfect comfort food. It’s hardly discerning or original.

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João Pedro Bim’s documentary juxtaposes propagandist newsreel footage with 1960s audio recordings of the military dictatorship debating legalised torture

In December 1968, the cabinet of Brazil’s ruling military dictatorship gathered for a classified meeting which resulted in the issuance of Institutional Act No 5, a decree that stripped dissenting citizens of their civil rights and led to a blood-soaked period of forced disappearances, torture and extra-judicial killings. While the meeting was recorded, the tapes only emerged in recent years. João Pedro Bim’s documentary overlays contemporaneous propaganda newsreels with these damning recordings to create an intriguing juxtaposition that reveals the covert machinations of dictatorial rule.

Roused from their archival slumber, the newsreel images conjure a mirage of prosperity and unity. In these state-produced materials, marching soldiers, modernist new-builds and flag-waving patriots are ubiquitous. The recorded statements made by high-ranking officials at the infamous meeting accompany these signposts of social harmony, as the plan to restrict democratic freedoms is laid out clinically and methodically. Cast in a new light, the smiling faces that populate the jingoistic films turn eerily grotesque.

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