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It could have been the perfect send-off – recognition at the Academy Awards of the artistry of Japan’s peerless animator Hayao Miyazaki.The moment The Boy and the Heron was named the winner of best animated feature in Los Angeles last weekend gave Japan a chance to reflect on Miyazaki’s towering influence, and contemplate whether the 83-year-old is truly finished making films.Studio Ghibli, where Miyazaki has performed his alchemy since the mid-1980s, had barely cleared a space for its second Oscar when talk turned to his…

To most of the world at large, Tom Cruise is primarily known as an action star, and I can totally see why. The Mission: Impossible film series alone has ingrained the image of the Dead Reckoning actor risking life and limb to top himself each time he steps in front of a camera. However, with Cruise’s post-Mission: Impossible 8 movie seeing the actor teaming up with auteur director Alejandro González Iñárritu, it looks like it’s once again time to reintroduce the world to another side of the famed actor’s chops. Which, as…

Home is clearly where the art is for Bacurau director Kleber Mendonça Filho, whose childhood apartment is the locus of the first part of this poetic but somewhat bemused memoir-essay about place, cinema and time. Twice renovated by his historian mother, the apartment was the site of his first early imaginative forays behind the camera, and appeared in his first two features, Neighbouring Sounds from 2012 and, four years later, Aquarius. Filho’s native city of Recife has also been subject to similar remodellings, as shown…

There were few sets at this year’s Glastonbury festival more anticipated than Lana Del Rey’s Saturday night Other stage headline slot. It’s been nearly 10 years since the cult American singer-songwriter last played on Worthy Farm; in that time, she’s released six albums and established herself as one of pop music’s greatest living songwriters, period – a bold and experimental musician whose renown only seems to grow as her music becomes more introspective and self-referential. Her latest record, Did You Know That There’s…

Cannes is nothing if not traditional, and this year returned to its newest, grimmest annual tradition: the statement of solidarity with the Ukrainian cause. A short film was shown about the outrage of kidnapping and “Russifying” Ukrainian children from captured territories.As so often, the festival featured its big names, its silverback gorillas and its favoured blue-chip directors, although it annoyed many who couldn’t be included in the club itself: the main competition list. But it wasn’t such a great festival for the…

Tourists visiting the Caribbean during the summer of 1981 might have spotted something unexpected: Joni Mitchell in the thick of things at a disco, grooving up a storm to the Police’s inscrutable hit De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da. “I love to dance, and anytime I heard it, boy, I didn’t care if there was no one on the floor,” she told Musician in 1983. “I was going to dance to that thing because of those changes in rhythm.” Mitchell’s appreciation for the Police’s worldly rhythmic approach would influence the direction of her…

Whatever your thoughts on Taika Waititi, there’s one thing pretty much everyone agrees upon: the man is a master of branding. Over the course of just a handful of features, the Kiwi filmmaker has cannoned from indie darling, to blockbuster maven, to a sought-after actor and celebrity in his own right. In an age when the celebrity-filmmaker seems to be in decline, Waititi has carved out a niche and made sure he’s the one to fill it.But what exactly is that niche? More so than pretty much any director of his profile,…