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The critics rained on Baz Luhrmann's parade but a star was born in Young and Beautiful, and Sofia Coppola hit a nerve with a film about a teen gang robbing the homes of Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman is here in Cannes, so is Ang Lee, and Audrey Tautou, and a second-generation Jagger, and Justin Timberlake, and Cindy Crawford, and Cheryl Cole, and Pelé, and all of them have been rained on, stubbornly, for days. Rain at Cannes used to be rare, regulars say. Russell Crowe has an anecdote about si...

Unfounded fears have driven some Christian groups to co-opt the language of discrimination for their reactionary policiesChristians make up 78% of the American population, 90% of Congress, and 100% of presidents thus far. But to hear some conservative Christians tell it, they are a persecuted minority. Newt Gingrich recently claimed that LGBT rights have caused Catholic adoption services to be "outlawed" in Washington DC and Massachusetts. In a loaded speech on the House floor last week, Repr...

Fashion writer Hadley Freeman answers eight-year-old Harriet's questionClothes have been around for a very long time. Even in The Flintstones, which is set a very, very, very long time ago, Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble wear some absolutely darling dresses, hair accessories and even the occasional swimsuit.No one knows who was the first person to invent clothing, but at some point in the very distant past, your ancestors and mine decided to put on some animal skins to keep themselves warm...

Man fires shots from starting pistol during live TV interview with Christopher Waltz and French actor Daniel AuteuilActors ran for cover at the Cannes film festival on Friday after a man fired shots from a starting pistol during a live TV broadcast.Oscar winner Christopher Waltz and French actor Daniel Auteuil were being interviewed by French TV station Canal+ on a beach-front set when two shots were heard."The bodyguards jumped over the barriers into the crowd and pulled him [the suspect] to...

Dispensaries selling cannabis bath salts, 'bud-tenders' advising on blends, even a marijuana university. As Colorado gears up for legalisation, we get the dope on Denver's 'green rush'I'm being driven around Denver by America's first professional stoner. William Breathes is the marijuana critic for the award-winning local paper Westword. Every week for the past three years, his boss has been paying for his weed."I don't really drink wine, so if this reference is a bit off, please forgive me, ...

Diane Abbott says the UK is facing a 'crisis of masculinity', with young men brought up on a diet of drugs and pornography, but it's a lack of love that really separates the generationsAccording to Diane Abbott, Britain is facing a crisis of masculinity. In a speech made on Thursday under the auspices of the thinktank Demos, the shadow health minister warned of a generation of angry, inarticulate young men who had no idea of their role in society. Raised on a diet of pornography and consumeri...

Spanish Benedictine nun is emerging as one of the most outspoken – and atypical – leaders of southern Europe's far leftThe speedometer on Teresa Forcades' battered silver Peugeot saloon shows 130kmh, but Spain's most famously radical nun is so busy talking she seems oblivious to the 80kmh speed limit signs above the motorway near her Sant Benet convent on the slopes of Montserrat, Catalonia's sacred mountain.The woman whose biting criticism of everything from banks to big pharmaceutical compa...

Man known for vivid account of an assault he stopped with a hatchet is wanted for murder after man found dead, police sayAuthorities in New Jersey are hunting an internet celebrity known as "Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker" after a man was found dead on Monday.Kai, whose real name is Caleb Lawrence McGillvary, has been charged with murder by police and is considered armed and dangerous.On Tuesday McGillvary had written that he had been "drugged [and] raped" in a post on his Facebook page....

Think of LA in the 1980s, and you think of hair metal. But elsewhere, the Bangles, the Dream Syndicate and a handful of others were reviving the 1960s and briefly becoming rock's hottest scene. Here's the story in the musicians' own wordsSome music scenes pass into legend – Memphis in 1955/56, San Francisco and London in 1966/67, New York in 1976/77. Many more, though, fade from memory – like the Paisley Underground. Back in the early 80s, Los Angeles saw a sudden spurt of young bands all inf...

Bands such as the Dream Syndicate, the Long Ryders and the Bangles created a sound that so influenced Prince, he named his label and studio after itWhen Steve Wynn moved back to Los Angeles in 1980 after finishing college, he looked at the music being made in his home city and realised he was out of step. "The idea that you'd make music with long, unscripted and unstructured jams. The idea that you were into 60s garage bands. The idea that you'd play one chord until your arm fell off. All the...

Northlake public library turns to crowdfunding website to raise $30,000 for nine-foot tall Hulk replicaA US library is hoping to "smash" its "stuffy reputation" by erecting a nine-foot statue of the Incredible Hulk.As hundreds of libraries in the UK face the threat of closure, staff at the Northlake public library near Chicago have taken matters into their own hands, launching a fundraising appeal on Indiegogo for which they are asking readers to donate money to help them buy a Hulk statue, a...

The Office was a rare sitcom that had something in it for everyone. It taught me to make the most of my relationshipsI never thought I would be one of those people who become emotionally attached to a TV show. And yet, here I am, still crying a bit about the end of The Office. I find myself looking back at old clips, interviews and behind the scenes shots the same way you occasionally pull out photos of your childhood.The Office meant a lot to me, sometimes on a deeply personal level, and the...

Kim Hughes, Paul Gascoigne, George Osborne, Star Trek – the cheapening of men's tears really has to stopThere was a scene in the latest Star Trek movie that tried my patience. What riled me was this: Spock cries. For those of you who have resisted the Trek allure, the point about Spock is that, being Vulcan, he is not meant to cry, ever. Then again, being actually half-human, but having chosen to live as a Vulcan, this always meant that, in the original series, he was the crew member Most Lik...

We won't tolerate passengers taking drugs or having sex in the cabin, but much of Almodóvar's film is quite close to the truth, flight attendant Sarah SteegarNo one watching this comedy by Pedro Almodóvar, set on a plane bound for Mexico from Madrid, would have trouble separating what's meant to be funny from what actually happens. Flight attendants obviously don't get drunk, and we don't tolerate passengers taking drugs or having sex in the cabin. But what surprised me was that some aspects ...

The novelist chooses the books that best explain a fascinating, baffling, tumultuous countryMy first visit to Haiti was in May 1991, four months into the initial term of Haiti's first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. At the time, it seemed that Haiti was on the cusp of a new era. "We are learning to live in the world again," as President Aristide said, reflecting on what might be called the miracle of his presidency, coming as it did after the corrupt, brutal reign of...

Anti-Assad fighter appears to eat internal organ of dead government soldier in horrific footageHorrific video footage of a Syrian rebel commander eating the heart or lung of a dead government fighter has aroused furious international controversy, fuelling an already heated debate over western support for the armed uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.The grisly film had been circulating for several days, attracting extensive comment on social media networks such as YouTube, Twi...

Ryan Fogle, accused of trying to recruit Russian agent for the CIA, had 'spy arsenal' of wigs and glasses, say officialsRussia has said it will expel a US diplomat accused of working as a spy after he was arrested while attempting to recruit a Russian agent for the CIA, in an elaborate raid that revealed the American was carrying a bizarre arsenal of suspected spyware.Ryan C Fogle, the third secretary at the US embassy in Moscow, was paraded in footage aired on state-run television after bein...

Cheap property, expats to blend in with, easily obtainable false documents: there are many reasons why Spain remains popular with people who would rather keep a low profileThe spectacular filmed arrest of Andrew Moran at his "luxury villa" in Calpe on the Costa Blanca is a reminder that Spain is still a happy hiding ground for many British criminals. Moran had been on the run for four years after escaping from Burnley crown court where he was convicted in his absence of conspiring to commit a...

They help collect taxes, promote tourism and save the environment, but Japan's mascots cannot escape controversyHe is a genuine household name in a country where celebrities are ten a penny. His rosy cheeks and unreadable expression appear on hundreds of products, from sweets and snacks to bags of rice, stationery and toys – part of a commercial portfolio worth almost 30bn yen last year.That's not bad for a cuddly black bear with a mischievous streak, who has risen from humble beginnings prom...

Reading on mobile? See the trailer hereNewly released American convict Michael Woods (Paul Walker) breaks parole, flees to Johannesburg to make things up with his girlfriend, is given the key to the wrong car at the airport, discovers a gun under his seat and a kidnapped girl trussed in the boot, and finds himself caught up in a political conspiracy involving top South African lawmen and driving for his life. We've had thrillers in which the protagonist is confined to a lifeboat, a coffin, a ...

Acclaimed as one of the great postwar American writers, James Salter has, at 87, spent his working life in the shadow of his peers. But his first novel in more than 30 years may finally raise the profile of this former fighter pilot whose books are inspiring a new generation of readersEight years ago, the writer James Salter received a telephone call out of the blue from an admirer: an American general who had loved his novel The Hunters so much he had ordered copies of it for all his group c...

As the congressional hearing shows, legitimate questions remain about security in Libya and an apparent cover-up"At this point, what difference does it make?" Those are the fateful words Republicans have been trying to hang around former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's neck since she first uttered them at a January congressional hearing. But it is also the question facing the Benghazi investigation itself.Can the inquiry into the attacks on the US consulate in Libya yield meaningful new ...

The members of the Orchestre Symphonique Kimbanguiste – the world's only all-black orchestra – are self-taught and started out playing homemade instruments. Now the band's founder is to be given a major international accoladeNathalie is a single mum who struggles to clothe her little boy and pay the rent. She plays the flute and the sax. Josephine gets up at 4.30am every day to sell omelettes at the market. She is in the chorus. Papy is a part-time mechanic who also runs his own pharmacy. He ...

Supporters wear yellow wristbands, triggering speculation Tehran mayor has chosen his colour for presidential candidacySupporters of Tehran's mayor, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, wore yellow wristbands and carried yellow banners as they welcomed their favourite potential nominee to their city on Wednesday.Ghalibaf has not yet officially entered the presidential race but is widely expected to register before official deadline on Saturday.His supporters' yellow wristbands and banner triggered specu...

Hollywood often produces two films on one subject, but the six movies based on the Battle of Çanakkale are a sign of a healthy domestic market for Turkish productsMaybe one sign of a fully matured film industry is when it's capable of spewing out an Olympus Has Fallen and a White House Down at the same time – coinciding films with identical subjects. One of those little zeitgeist clots that suggest creative minds running in parallel, in a highly evolved community driven by the relentless back...

Winfrey cast as the wife of the butler (played by Forest Whitaker) who attended presidents Kennedy, Nixon and ReaganReading this on mobile? Click here to viewThe debut trailer for Lee Daniels' The Butler, based on the true story of a black man who served eight US presidents, has hit the web.Forest Whitaker stars as Cecil Gaines, whose story is based on the real-life White House butler Eugene Allen. Allen served presidents between 1952 and his retirement in 1986, by which time he had risen fro...

Tian Tian and Yang Guang have boosted visitors, but I'm not convinced by the conservation rationale for keeping zoos openIt seems that Edinburgh zoo is marking its centenary with something of an annus mirabilis. Ever since the arrival of "our" pandas, a stampede of visitors has seen the once somnambulant finances of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland firmly perk up.Little wonder then that in a lecture given to the Royal Society of Edinburgh last week, the zoo's Chris West should pay tri...

The Southbank Centre's head of classical music introduces the sixth instalment of their Rest is Noise Festival, a time when 'the world turned on its dark side'"The world turns on its dark side", proclaims the opening music of A Child of Our Time, the Oratorio which English composer and pacifist Michael Tippett began writing on the day that Britain declared war on Germany in September 1939, and which tells the story of the murderous events that led up to Kristallnacht in 1938.In The Art of Fea...

Dutch company plans to choose crew for private mission with reality TV show, in order to meet $6bn costAlmost 80,000 people have applied to take part in a one-way mission to Mars, each of them completing a rigorous application that stresses the need for a "Can Do!" attitude, asks individuals about their sense of humour and requires the submission of an application fee that can be as much as $75.Mars One, the Dutch company behind the proposed mission, says it has received applications from mor...

The killing of Daniele Lo Presti in February has exposed how the paparazzi prey on the rich and famous in Italy – and how these hunters are becoming the huntedIt's now more than two months since Daniele Lo Presti, a famous Italian paparazzo, was murdered under Testaccio bridge in Rome. Lo Presti had been due to meet friends for a run on 27 February at 5.30pm, and had been jogging along the footpath that follows the river Tiber. He was wearing a tracksuit and trainers and had his house keys ro...

Stellar success of comic-book movie means Black can realise long-nurtured project featuring the 1930s pulp action heroIron Man 3 director Shane Black is to bring the pulp hero Doc Savage to the big screen following the blockbuster success of his current superhero sequel, according to the Hollywood Reporter.Black, a screenwriter on the first two Lethal Weapon films in the late 1980s who only made the leap to director with 2005's well-received Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, finds himself suddenly in dema...

The phrase may have baffled Kim Jong-un, but the maverick basketball player is hoping his favour will be granted anywayThere is one approach that has not yet been tried with North Korea. Where sanctions, shows of strength and pressure from Beijing have failed to cut much ice with the regime, Dennis Rodman, the maverick basketball player turned maverick diplomat, is going another route. "I'm calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea, or as I call him 'Kim', to do me a solid and cut Kenneth ...

Former heavyweight champion sets his sights on Shakespeare after wrapping up his one-man stage show, Undisputed TruthIt might bring new meaning to the line "lend me your ears", but former boxer Mike Tyson has said he wants to try his skills at Shakespeare.The onetime heavyweight champion of the world has been touring his autobiographical solo show, Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth, around the US and seems to have picked up a taste for the stage.Speaking to the New York Daily News, the 46-year-old...

When even the IMF's free market ideologues recoil from the UK chancellor's austerity politics, democracy itself is at stakeGeorge Osborne and his Treasury officials are gearing up for a fight. They've promised to make life difficult for the other side for the next two weeks. The unlikely opponents are the team of economists visiting from the IMF for a regular policy review.Why has this routine meeting, which would hardly be noticed outside professional circles, become a confrontation? Because...

Cody Wilson, 25, successfully tested plastic handgun built by his Texas firm Defense Distributed using an $8,000 3D printerThe world's first gun made almost entirely by a 3D plastic printer has been successfully fired in Texas.The successful test of the plastic handgun, which was built by Defense Distributed using an $8,000 3D printer, came after a year of development. The company, which is run by 25-year-old Cody Wilson, now plans to publish the blueprints for the gun online.Wilson and a com...

I'm sticking with the Republican party because voices of reform and fresh ideas are starting to take over againLouisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is right: "Simply being the anti-Obama party didn't work. You can't beat something with nothing."For a major political party in America today, if single women, minorities and young people don't like what you offer, then you face a de facto existential problem. Until recently, many Republicans didn't get this fact, or if they did, they simply didn't car...

Owner of Aberporth base, where unmanned aerial vehicles take off for tests over land and sea, says public fears are illogicalIt is an odd little airfield, not far from Aberporth in west Wales, a former fishing village that now survives thanks to tourists with a taste for hill walking, windswept beaches and bracing swims in Cardigan Bay.Few of the visitors venture to the former RAF base close by, and those that do are unlikely to know this small site, which was first established in the early y...

South Carolina's special election may turn into a referendum on President Obama, which is bad news for Colbert BuschRepublican Mark Sanford has closed the gap with Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch in the South Carolina first district special election to take place on Tuesday. The latest poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP) has Sanford jumping into to a 1 pt lead 47% to 46% after being down in the same survey 9 pts just two weeks ago. A poll from Red Racing Horses (RRH) has Colbert Busch and ...

The celebrity historian's retraction was a model of the genre. That's what makes it so difficult to believeIs there any stranger form of public pronouncement, when you really stop to think about it, than the kind of "unqualified apology" just issued by Niall Ferguson, celebrity historian and purveyor of wrong insights, following his remarks about John Maynard Keynes at a conference in California last Thursday?At first glance, Ferguson's entirely unweaselly statement looks like a model of how ...

The reaction to Google's latest gadget has been a mix of wild excitement and deep apprehensionThe Chinese name their years after animals – the year of the goat, the rat and so on. In the tech world, we name years after devices. Thus, 2007 was the year of the iPhone and 2010 was the year of the iPad. It's beginning to look as though 2013 will be the year of Glass. This prediction is based on the astonishing level of comment, curiosity, excitement, trepidation and hostility surrounding an augme...

The battle for control of cyberspace is turning nasty, with young hackers, pirates and activists facing long prison sentences. We report from the frontlineA short, handsome man bounces outside the colossal courthouse on Walnut Street, Newark, New Jersey. He's doing it to keep warm – it is freezing today – and also because he's fired up. His name is Andrew Auernheimer, but he's known across the internet as "weev". His 20 or so friends are young and pale, as if they spend too much time indoors....

Republican Party Animals operator David Stein says he is really David Cole, and that he still holds controversial viewsTo those who knew him, or thought they knew him, he was a cerebral, fun-loving gadfly who hosted boozy gatherings for Hollywood's political conservatives. David Stein brought right-wing congressmen, celebrities, writers and entertainment industry figures together for shindigs, closed to outsiders, where they could scorn liberals and proclaim their true beliefs.Over the past f...

Keystone Sporting Arms walks back its Crickett model, which critics say is geared to children, after two-year-old girl is killedThe gun manufacturer Keystone Sporting Arms is in a defensive crouch this week. The Pennsylvania-based company has taken down a website for a popular product. When I called Keystone at noon on Friday I was immediately (and politely) referred to the company's lawyer.Keystone is in retreat because one of the guns it makes for children, a lightweight, single-shot, .22-c...

The Guardian braves the streets of the world's hippest neighbourhood to ask: is Google's new gadget the real deal?Google Glass has captured the hearts of the tech elite, with its promise of the gadget of the future. Evoking sci-fi epics such as Minority Report, Google's vision of a fully-wireless, fully-immersive, tech-enabled existence has proven irresistible to those who have been allowed access. By Google's own account, the glasses seem to offer super powers. Sightings of the the wealthy, ...

Whether or not 'Islamophobia' is a valid term, leading Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have been confused, inconsistent and blundering in their attempts to talk about Muslims.Sam Harris is about as consistent as Glenn Greenwald is concise, which made their exchange of multi-thousand word cowpats last month particularly grueling reading. That's a shame, because Harris dropped a retrospective clanger that very few people picked up on. It came in a recent volley against Greenwald, i...

As several major chains announce expansion plans, the march of the high street pasta and pizza outlet seems unstoppable. Is this great news for cash-strapped Britons? Or indicative of how the search for authentic Italian just got even harderUp north, such is the popularity of a certain kind of identikit Italian restaurant (think smart designer looks and predictable pasta dishes), that webzine, Manchester Confidential, coined the acronym, YAFI, Yet Another Fucking Italian, for this epidemic. A...

Jackie Shroff to attend special screening of his film Hero as city marks Britain's role in Bollywood's global success storyThe Bollywood actor Jackie Shroff will be visiting Bradford on Friday to celebrate 100 years to the day since the release of India's first feature film, Raja Harishchandra.Jackie Shroff, who this year celebrates 30 years since the release of his own breakthrough film Hero (Subhash Ghai, 1983), will visit the National Media Museum, where the film is being screened.The crit...

Chief executive has allowed gun lobby to be bought by firearms industry, says Mark Kelly, husband of Gabby GiffordsMark Kelly, the husband of the former US Congress member Gabby Giffords who was shot in the head in the 2011 Tucson shooting, has called on the leadership of the National Rifle Association to step aside and allow a new generation of more moderate NRA chiefs to emerge.Kelly has thrown down the gauntlet to Wayne LaPierre, the NRA's combative chief executive, on the opening day of t...

Publication's star columnist fired after falsely accusing NBA player of concealing that he was once engaged to a womanIn an unusually high-profile termination in the media world, the Daily Beast Thursday fired star columnist Howard Kurtz after Kurtz bungled a story about NBA player Jason Collins coming out as gay. Kurtz, a media reporter, published a column on Wednesday criticizing Collins' essay in Sports Illustrated in which the basketball player talked about being gay, becoming the first a...