(RCA)
The Blackpink singer’s high-energy debut solo album, astutely timed to coincide with her role in The White Lotus, is packed with styles and stars that only highlight her lack of musical identity

It must feel pretty damn good to be Lisa right now. Alter Ego , the debut solo album by the Thai rapper and singer, is arriving at a germane time: HBO is airing the third season of its venomous satirical hit The White Lotus , in which she stars as one of the titular resort’s receptionists. The show is one of the last vaguely monocultural products that seems to exist right now, making instant stars of its cast; not that Lisa, government name Lalisa Manobal, necessarily needed the profile boost. As a member of behemoth K-pop four-piece Blackpink – perhaps the most successful girl group of all time, with billions of streams and a trail of sold-out stadiums left in their wake – she is already one of the most famous people in the world. But a show such as The White Lotus , which everyone and their grandmother watches, brings with it a different kind of fame.

Alter Ego is the kind of debut album seemingly designed to capitalise on that newfound attention – it’s a brash, high-octane pop-rap record that clearly wants to cover all bases. Opener Born Again, featuring Raye and Doja Cat, taps into 80s disco sleaze, landing somewhere between the Weeknd and Dua Lipa. A collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion is a would-be bad bitch anthem; one with Future is begging for placement in the trailer for an edgy mainstream action film. There’s a song with Rosalía – perfect for insertion into one of Spotify’s many well-streamed musica urbana playlists – as well as a gratuitous 90s sample (on Moonlit Floor) and a collaboration with nascent Afrobeats star Tyla for good measure.

The actor, 48, on stage fright, dashed tennis dreams, meeting a naked Harvey Keitel and why he loves Mortherland

When I was five, I was in the front row of the choir for our school nativity and couldn’t hack it. I pulled a sickie, started crying, had to get out. I don’t know why the hell I wanted to perform in front of people.

My parents’ mantra was “do what makes you happy if you can”. They didn’t push my three siblings and me to be academic. Our home was beautifully relaxed. Behaving well and being nice was drilled into us. And we could throw a party and they would stay out of the way.

As the Bond franchise heads to the online giant, thriller author William Boyd foresees a slew of spin-offs and says AI is not a threat to human screenwriters

Among the people best placed to predict how any James Bond of the future might look is a British writer with a strong feel for spies and for spying. William Boyd has been drawn back to the terrain repeatedly in his books. What’s more, he wrote his own official Bond novel, Solo , in 2013 .

Now Amazon has picked up the rights to the character, Boyd foresees a succession of 007 spin-off products and entertainments. Perhaps even be new AI-generated novels? “Certainly wait for Bond aftershave – and for the theme park and the dinner jackets,” he said. “The new owners will have to commodify everything about their billion-dollar purchase, so there will be nightclubs and vodkas.”

The actor on being ‘Curly’ Watts for 20 years, beating his addiction and playing the same festival as Johnny Cash

Born in 1961 in Wythenshawe, Manchester, Kevin Kennedy is best known for playing Norman “Curly” Watts on ITV soap opera Coronation Street. The  Manchester Polytechnic graduate portrayed the supermarket worker from 1983 to 2003, as well as sustaining a career in music as a solo artist and in bands. He has appeared in musicals including We Will Rock You and Rock of Ages, and stars in Punk Off – The Sounds of Punk and New Wave, which tours until 7 March.

That Barbour jacket and I have been through a lot together. Being Curly was always comforting, like putting on a pair of slippers you’ve worn for years.

With an unwavering eye, photographer David Levene reveals the secrets of life backstage in London’s West End, capturing the likes of Steve Coogan, Vanessa Williams, Paapa Essiedu and John Lithgow as they prepare for performance

Lightbulb-wreathed mirrors, wigs and makeup artists, a sense of faded glamour: the backstage dressing room has its very own lore in Theatreland. It is a private space for a company of actors to gear up or wind down, in between slipping into character, but it’s so much more than that. Films such as All About Eve and John Cassavetes’s Opening Night, as well as plays such as Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser, show this space bristling with tension, vulnerability and rivalries. And Judi Dench has spoken about the fun to be had in this other, unseen side of the proscenium arch ( including accidentally flashing Kenneth Branagh ).

Denise Gough (centre), who plays Emma in People, Places and Things, chats with her fellow Emmas during the interval at the Trafalgar Studios theatre.

After the death of her father, the writer took refuge in the kinds of stories she had once written off – discovering a comforting world of funny heroines and happy endings

Grief is an intensifier. It doesn’t often – despite what films and television would have you believe – cause you to act massively out of character. Like motherhood or any other huge life upheaval, its actual effect is to strip away the nonsense and leave your essential nature, your core, not just intact but now unobscured by everyday concerns and frivolities.

So it was no real surprise to find myself, in the immediate weeks after the death of my beloved dad in 2023, flinging myself into books. I would have done so literally, if I could. I wanted to gather my physical books into a wall – or better yet, a cave – around me that would both protect me from this new reality and let me cry in peace within it. Failing that, I took mental refuge in them instead.

This Sunday could see West Bank-set documentary No Other Land win an Oscar but it remains without US distribution, one of many challenging films facing problems

The Oscars are far from a consensus, but few films head into Sunday’s awards with as much critical acclaim as No Other Land , a documentary chronicling the destruction of the West Bank community of Masafer Yatta by the Israeli military, which seeks to expel families from their land to make way for a military training base. The film, made by an Israeli- Palestinian collective, garnered numerous festival accolades, several independent awards and nearly every American critics association’s “best of” title. But the vast majority of Americans cannot view it.

For months, even after No Other Land secured an Oscar nomination, no major US distributor bought the project, stranding the film in a strange limbo – high visibility, at least in the film world, but almost no access to audiences. At a time when studios and streamers are typically boasting their Oscar bona fides, no company has been willing to touch it. “We were told that people were afraid” of distributing a film critical of the Israeli government during the war with Gaza , said Yuval Abraham, the film’s co-director, even though No Other Land filmed in the West Bank and wrapped before the attacks of 7 October 2023. (For transparency, Abraham has previously written for the Guardian.) “Some of them said: ‘If we take this film, we will have to balance it with another film.’”

Controversial plans dubbed ‘worst idea in the world’ would have stopped producers from applying for new grants before current projects end

Arts Council England has shelved its controversial plan to stop producers from applying for new funding before their current project is over after it was dubbed “the worst idea in the world”.

Figures from the sector told the Guardian that the significant change to the way artists and companies access grants would have plunged organisations into “crisis” if they were enacted. Many of them warned that their firms might fold because they would not have been able to adapt.

The latest creation from Steven Knight tells the story of the illegal and brutal boxing scene in Victorian Britain. Stars Stephen Graham, Malachi Kirby and Erin Doherty talk thievery, brawling and broccoli

Stephen Graham is red-faced and fidgeting in a London hotel alongside Malachi Kirby and Erin Doherty, his co-stars in A Thousand Blows. I explained how my partner had initially dismissed the gritty period drama on account of all the brutal boxing bouts. But after seeing a glimpse of an extremely hench, shirtless and sweating Graham, she decided that she probably would be able to join me in watching after all.

“I don’t know what to say,” says Graham, as Kirby and Doherty tease him. “If that’s what it takes to get bums on seats, I’ll go with it.”