eclectic

Colombian cocaine hippos, a Star Wars parody set in northern France and an unlikely father-daughter pairing of Stephen Fry and Lena Dunham all feature in an eclectic lineup at this year’s Berlin film festival, which was unveiled on Monday.The 74th edition of the 10-day Berlinale will open on 15 February with the world premiere of Small Things Like These, based on Irish author Clare Keegan’s bestselling historical novel. Adapted to the big screen by Enda Walsh, the film sees Cillian Murphy reuniting with Belgian director…

Image: Myriad PicturesFor years, the idea of Beetlejuice getting a sequel has been a pipe dream. A sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 film has been sparking up since 2011, though nothing everreally got off the ground in the last decade. But with casting announcements over the last week, the long discussed sequel is beginning to come together, and now another big name actor is joining the ensemble.Balancing Fan Expectations in The MandalorianPer the Hollywood Reporter, Willem Dafoe’s been cast in the upcoming sequel, which began…

Eclectic in thematic scope and narrative style, and with elements of Scandinavian noir, The Body by the Shore is a complex sci-fi thriller. The author Tabish Khair, who is also a poet and academic, is a critical voice in contemporary Indian English writing whose works have been lauded for straddling genres. In his latest work, he explores the darker vagaries of human behaviour at a macro level, through the prism of science.   The sort of place that Michelle finds herself in. An oil rig in the North Sea. (Carsten…

After playing the first three hours of Atomic Heart, I felt like I had a pretty good handle on what to expect. The upcoming first-person shooter felt like a clear spiritual cousin to Bioshock Infinite, trading in the 1922 skies of Colombia for an alternate history vision of the Soviet Union circa 1955. I’d wander through dark corridors, fending off rogue androids while unraveling the mystery of a utopian paradise run amok. Simple. Moments later, a developer shot me forward into a small open world where I was hoisting…

You can’t accuse Nina Hagen, regarded as the godmother of German punk – and the soundtrack to former German chancellor Angela Merkel’s departure from power – of being predictable or repetitive. Shadrack, the opening to her latest album Unity, is a Bible story half-sung over a synth-funk meets hip-hop beat, and sets the tone for an album that is wildly eclectic to the point of chaos. Moving from dub to funk and rock to folk, with covers of Bob Dylan and Sheryl Crow, Unity sounds as if records have been randomly pulled from…

Last week, SZA released the cover of her second album, SOS. A photo of her perched on a long diving board in the middle of the ocean, it turned into a global news story, reported everywhere from the website of the National Hockey League, which approved of the St Louis Blues jersey she was wearing, to the Daily Mail, which reacted very much as you might expect the Daily Mail to react when a Black artist appears in a photo apparently modelled on a paparazzo shot of Diana, Princess of Wales, taken days before her death.The…

Witnessing the Chicago DJ Honey Dijon behind the decks can be as close to a spiritual experience as you can get on the dancefloor. Trading in the four-to-the-floor kick drum that provides the aortic pulse to house music, Dijon’s mid-tempo sets conduct her crowds perfectly from tantalising buildups to scattered breakdowns and communal euphoria as her soaring melodies kick in. Her debut album, 2017’s Best of Both Worlds, played as a rousing microcosm of these multihour sets, and in the years since its release, Dijon has…

Fifteen years ago, the BBC broadcast a documentary about the history of Hawkwind. Talking heads attested to their vast influence and reminisced about the kind of misadventures that tend to befall a band apparently existing on a diet largely composed of LSD. But the whole thing was undercut with sadness. The surviving members of what’s generally considered Hawkwind’s classic lineup – the one that recorded their unlikely hit single Silver Machine and the extraordinary 1973 live album Space Ritual – had fallen out,…

When you put Guillermo del Toro’s name on something, it invites certain expectations. Whether he’s making superhero movies or gothic romance stories, the director’s works all share certain sensibilities: a love of outcasts, incredible attention to detail, a seamless marriage of high and pop culture, and lots of really cool monsters. That all remains true in Cabinet of Curiosities, a horror anthology on Netflix. But it’s also much more than that: while del Toro’s name is in the title, he’s enlisted a carefully curated…

As well as fronting the Charlatans and hosting Twitter listening parties, Tim Burgess has somehow found the time to write four books and record four solo releases in the last four years alone. Typical Music, his sixth album since 2003, doesn’t spare the horses: it’s a 22-track epic recorded over 30 days, amounting to almost 90 minutes of music. Created with Coil and Spiritualized’s Thighpaulsandra, AKA Timothy Lewis, and ex-Grumbling Fur musician Daniel O’Sullivan, an eclectic adventure lies between driving pop opener…