lust

The phrase “seven wonders of the ancient world” is enough to make your heart sink. There is something so fly-blown about the notion of an archaeological greatest hits – all tourist buses, bossy tour guides and dodgy air conditioning. Bettany Hughes, however, is on a mission to re-enchant us with what she calls seven “test cases of the human imagination”, from the Great Pyramid at Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes by way of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. “I have travelled as the ancients did by land and sea to explore…

After huge anticipation over the last few weeks, Lust Stories 2 has finally premiered on OTT platforms. It is the sequel to the Emmy-nominated show Lust Stories. It is an anthology comprising four different short films and unlike the first season, all the films are by different directors. Lust Stories 2 revolves around the story of four women through short films and delves into the themes of desire and love while showcasing a new perspective on the aspects of human relationships. Now, Lust Stories 2 has finally premiered…

via Amazon Studios There’s plenty of folks out there who blast the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the death of cinema, but those same people should probably take a much closer look at Wattpad, with My Fault the latest feature-length adaptation of a story that originated on the online platform to find a massive audience in spite of a critical pasting. The eye-wateringly awful After franchise that doesn’t show any signs of ending despite consistently scathing reactions, Netflix’s hugely successful but resolutely…

Mark Jordan enjoys walking around his Welsh home town “got up like a Christmas tree” in vintage Vivienne Westwood bondage shirts and bright blue brothel creepers. “The other day, I was stopped by this young guy walking the dog, he was wide-eyed and said, ‘What is that you’re wearing?’” Jordan says. “His eyes were on sticks when I told him that some of this old punk gear is worth thousands.”A teen of the late 1970s, punk was Jordan’s escape from growing up on a drab Merseyside council estate through an economic recession.…

Christian Petzold has for years been a titan of German cinema – and the Berlin film festival itself – and his new movie is an odd, quibbling tragicomedy with perhaps a little of Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, avowedly intended as the second part of a trilogy about creativity and love (the first being Undine).Afire is an approachable and digestible movie in some ways, and I liked the morose, hangdog look conjured by actor Thomas Schubert playing the miserable young writer Leon, who correctly suspects that his new…

Like the boot room at Anfield, or the unremarkable Detroit house that became Motown Records’ hit factory, the artist’s studio is where the magic happens. But the strange alchemy that turns mark-making into a spellbinding work of art is only the half of it. Sometimes, there is sex in the studio, too. The Dutch golden age painter Gerard de Lairesse hired two sisters as models in his home town of Liège, but did a runner in 1664 after locals discovered that he’d been having an affair with not one but both of them. And when…

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…