flamboyant

Fleur EastFleur East in 1990 and 2023. Later portrait: Simon Webb. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair and makeup: Keshia East. Archive image: courtesy of Fleur EastBorn in London in 1987, Fleur East is a musician and presenter. As a contestant on 2014’s X Factor, her cover of Uptown Funk was so popular it charted before Mark Ronson’s original was released. After she finished in second place, her debut single, Sax, went platinum. She parted ways with Simon Cowell’s label in 2017, setting up her own, Platinum East, on which she…

The first instalment of a two-film French-language adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s swashbuckling classic, this lavish period drama taps enthusiastically into the spirit of the source material. This is flamboyant, ostentatious, grandstanding film-making, unashamedly old-fashioned and incorrigibly entertaining. Everything, from the opulent court costumes to the showy single-shot fight sequence that cements the grudging respect between D’Artagnan (François Civil) and his new comrades (Vincent Cassel, Romain Duris, Pio…

Much has been said of how João Gilberto disrupted Brazillian music with his take on samba, which went on to become bossa nova. His whispering vocals and offbeat, percussion-laced guitar were a novelty to Brazil in the 1950s, when chested-voice crooners and sumptuous arrangements were nothing but the top-charters of the country’s radio. Few would dare saying the same of Gal Costa, who died this week aged 77 – even though she, too, sparked Brazilian musical revolution.Where Gilberto found minimalism, Gal found maximalism.…

Masayoshi Son, the billionaire boss of SoftBank 9984 0.67% Group Corp., has long presided over a quarterly earnings ritual of zany slide presentations. One included a goose laying multibillion-dollar golden eggs and another flock of unicorns flying upward along a chart of growth in artificial intelligence.  Mr. Son is planning to step back from the routine when the giant technology investor delivers its earnings Friday, instead greeting…

For the film’s first half hour ‘Elvis’ is a revelatory nightmare fueled by capitalism and racism. But for most of the runtime, there are flashes of vibrant, beguiling entertainment A still from the film ElvisCast: Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Dacre MontgomeryDirector: Baz LuhrmannRating: 3/5Flamboyant filmmaker Baz Luhrmann’s bio-pic of Elvis Presley as seen through the complicated relationship with his enigmatic manager, Colonel…

Apple TV+ has shared another Prehistoric Planet — Uncovered video to YouTube, part of the promotion for the larger Prehistoric Planet docuseries that is currently in the middle of a five-day run of episodes. The new YouTube video focuses on "flamboyant flyers," a group of dinosaurs that have large protrusions on their heads. But are they there to help them fly more efficiently, or is there another reason? Narrater Sir David Attenborough and scientists take a look in this five-minute video. You can watch the new video…

What do you get if you cross an Australian ballroom dancing teacher with the owner of a little cinema? Genetically speaking, the answer comes in the flamboyant shape of Baz Luhrmann, the music-loving director of Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge!, who learned to tango with his mother and watched films on the screen his father owned in the tiny town of Herons Creek.Born Mark Anthony Luhrmann in Sydney in 1962, he is already the creator of a handful of exuberant popular hits, and is now telling the story of Elvis Presley,…