Culture

French singer-songwriter Georges Moustaki dies following illness

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:50:06 GMT

Greek-born Georges Moustaki, celebrated for his collaborations with Edith Piaf, has died aged 79

French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki, beloved in France for his collaborations with Edith Piaf and songs celebrating liberty, died on Thursday after a long illness. He was 79.

The Greek-born singer grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and arrived in Paris in 1951, where played guitar at nightclubs and met some of the period's best-known singers.

He was introduced to Edith Piaf in the late 1950s and started to write songs for the Parisian star, the most famous being Milord – about a lower-class girl who falls in love with an upper-class British traveller.

Developing a reputation as a singer in his own right in the mid-1960s, the hirsute and heavily bearded Moustaki achieved fame with songs such as the immigrant ballad Le Meteque, and Ma Liberté – a hymn to the 60s free-living spirit.

A life-long advocate of left-wing causes, Moustaki ended his singing career in 2009, later telling newspaper La Croix thathe was suffering froman irreversible bronchial illness that made it impossible to carry on.

The French culture minister, Aurelie Filippetti, hailed an "artist with convictions who conveyed humanist values ... and a great poet", while Twitter was full of tributes to a singer many said had defined their childhoods.

Nebraska: 'What it lacks in voltage it makes up in warmth' - Cannes video review

Xan Brooks, Elliot Smith — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:48:59 GMT

Xan Brooks reviews Nebraska, Alexander Payne's entry to the 2013 Cannes film festival

Xan Brooks

Elliot Smith

Cannes comes down to earth with depression-era movie Nebraska

Charlotte Higgins — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:48:51 GMT

Shot in black and white, Alexander Payne's new movie is a melancholic, gentle road movie

This year at Cannes, film after film has delved into the world of the wealthy. The Great Gatsby's lavish parties have been rivalled by only the madly superficial Roman fiesta that begins Paolo Sorrentino's The Great Beauty. Meanwhile their glittering possessions are filched in Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring.

But now Cannes has come back to earth, and the hyper-real colours have drained away. Shot in black and white, Alexander Payne's Nebraska is a "depression-era movie", the director said. A melancholic, gentle road movie of the post-sub-prime, recession-hit mid west, a landscape of dirt-poor farms, overweight and unemployed young men and with a chief character, like the companions in The Wizard of Oz, in search of a dream that turns out to be an illusion. Its visual style, said Payne, is "as austere as the lives of the people who inhabit the story".

Two years ago The Artist premiered at Cannes – another film in black and white, which payed joyful homage to the silent era. Nebraska is a different prospect. "I've always wanted to make a film in black and white, and really it left our cinema because of commercial not artistic reasons," said Payne. "It never left fine-art photography. And this modest, austere story seemed to lend itself to being made in black and white." Paramount, the studio behind the film, had agreed to a black-and-white shoot after "some discussion", said Payne. "We did settle on a budget less than it would have been had it been in colour."

"A film is made in the time it is made, and the winds of society blow through it," said Payne of the film's texture of economic decline, with the one-horse town that provides much of the setting punctuated by "for lease" signs and battered advertisements for home loans.

However, the story predated the financial crisis: Payne, who also directed The Descendants and Election, had had the script in his possession for nine years. Superficially similar to Sideways, in that it describes a road trip taken by a pair of male companions, it was a film that he decided to delay because "I was so sick and tired of shooting in cars by the time Sideways was finished I didn't want to make this right away". The resulting movie was entirely different from its 2004 predecessor: "I wanted to shoot this one with a rather plain, direct visual style. Sideways was a bit more rich, lush, romantic."

Payne prepared for the shoot by watching his favourite black and white films – including Peter Bogdanovich's depression-era Paper Moon (1973), and The Last Picture Show (1971). "The Last Picture Show presents lives in a small town, with a perfume of decay: there's perhaps some similarity there," he said. The film tells the story of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern), an old man who is convinced that a junk mail telling him he has won a million dollars is genuine. Davey (Will Forte), his long-suffering son, who humours his conviction and sets out with him to claim the prize, played by Will Forte, is is along for the ride.

Charlotte Higgins

C'mon! Arrested Development's best moments – interactive

Kayla Epstein — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:43:07 GMT

The beloved show is heading Netflix for another season – maybe you've heard? We asked Guardian readers to share their favourite inside jokes and videos of the Bluth clan so far

Kayla Epstein

Chinua Achebe funeral celebrates revered Nigerian author

Monica Mark — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:37:10 GMT

Pomp-filled ceremony betrays Things Fall Apart author's dislike of grandeur, but fails to override national outpouring of love

The red carpet was rolled out, the dignitaries arrived in a whirlwind of helicopters and armed guards, and the obituaries came pouring in as Nigeria buried the revered writer Chinua Achebe on Thursday.

There were dancing troupes, a choir, red-bow-tied trumpeters, keyboard players and people darting around filming on their tablets. At one point, keen not to miss any opportunity, the grieving audience was counselled to buy a documentary on the celebrated author, whose terse prose did perhaps more than any other writer to project African realities into the minds of westerners.

It was exactly the sort of pomp the literary titan hated, and often ripped apart with the witty, acerbic tip of his pen.

Achebe died on 21 March, aged 82. If he avoided a state funeral, it wasn't for lack of trying from the government. Despite rebuffing national honours twice over his distrust at an oil-fed elite who left the country a "bankrupt and lawless fiefdom", the Goodluck Jonathan administration tried to hold a state funeral, before capitulating to the three hour-long service in the white-washed St Philips Anglican church in Achebe's hometown of Ogidi.

The writer was no stranger to such irony. His first manuscript was nearly lost to history when publishers in London thought the handwritten pages from Africa were a joke. Fifty years later, Things Fall Apart, an anti-colonialist anthem with a title borrowed from a Yeates poem, is still the biggest-selling novel from Africa of all time. It tells the story of his Igbo tribe's disastrous first experience of European colonialism.

Despite his success, Achebe turned down all offers to teach creative writing courses, saying: "I don't know how it's done".

In 2004, he declined a national award. The second time the offer came, in 2011, he again refused, saying "the reasons for rejecting the offer when it was first made have not been addressed, let alone solved".

Clearly this time the author was in no position to resist the state honours being conferred on him. President Jonathan reminded funeral attendees of the author's criticisms of politicians and corruption. After the singing, the long speeches and prayers, this was a moment about which many had been holding their breath.

"For those of you that read The Trouble with Nigeria, Achebe told us that there is nothing wrong with Nigeria. The problem is the political leadership," he said, waving a copy of the novel.

A toe-curling pause followed and Achebe's family looked on with unreadable expressions.

Jonathan went on to read a passage that highlighted the political corruption and manipulation that had mired the African oil giant since independence. "That was in Chinua's last book," the former professor said. "All of us must work hard to change this country."

The audience applauded cautiously.

Ghana's president, John Mahama, seated beside Jonathan, waved as his own name was read out amongst a long list of political dignitaries.

"During a recent discussion about Achebe, a political contemporary asked me if I felt as though I had somehow become part of the system that we so bitterly decried in our youth," Mahama said in a recent tribute.

"'No,' I replied without hesitation. 'I entered politics because I wanted to be a part of changing that system,'" he wrote.

Whether people across Africa agree or whether, once again, Achebe may have slyly exposed a ruling elite is a question for history.

Still, only the most hardened cynic could fail to have been moved by some of the celebrations of Achebe's life. For days, young people have marched in the sweltering heat with banners commemorating the author. As they sang lilting hymns at the funeral, some of the red-gowned choir members put their arms around each other.

Three women held photos of a smiling Achebe as they sang an operatic re-enactment of traditional theatre in St Philips. At one point, one knelt in front of the gleaming coffin topped with white roses.

Behind all the gloss, what was left for many was a simple celebration of a deeply admired man.

"I have never seen so many people, even white people, dancing to our [Igbo] music. I cannot tell the number of people, but they are more than 10 villages put together," said 52-year-old farmer Ike Dimelu. "The world is in our village today because of Chinua Achebe.

"I may never see a lot of people like this in one place again. I've danced and I still want to dance," he said over the noise of drumming and honking cars.

Like hundreds of others, he wore one of the blue prints emblazoned with a serene-looking Achebe, red cap atop his head. "The literary icon lives on," was printed over it.

Monica Mark

The History Boys – review

Alfred Hickling — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:23:59 GMT

Crucible, Sheffield

Alan Bennett's almost 10-year-old play about a group of bright, northern grammar-school lads preparing for Oxbridge has not wanted for quality revivals. But it has been crying out for a run in the city where it is set, if only for the laugh that greets its most plaintively memorable line: "I'm a Jew, I'm small, I'm homosexual and I live in Sheffield. I'm fucked."

Director Michael Longhurst takes a high-octane approach, punctuating scenes with noisy synth-pop and aggressive choreography that establishes the 1980s context while suggesting that, for all the boys' urbane familiarity with everything from Wittgenstein to George Formby, there is raging hormonal turmoil beneath the intellectual crust. Yet it is not only the music that makes the play seem a product of a different era. The more time passes, the more troubling the characterisation of the overly tactile pedagogue, Hector, appears. Though his surreptitious gropings are characterised as "more appreciative than exploratory", and Matthew Kelly's performance appears wholly benign, the inescapable fact remains that he's a sexual predator who locks the classroom door.

A rank scent of furtive behaviour permeates Longhurst's production. Most of it emanates from Tom Rhys Harries's swaggeringly cocksure Dakin, whose conquest of the school secretary is shown in full view, and who generates a dangerous electricity when he casually invites the young supply teacher Irwin to celebrate his exam results by performing oral sex. Edwin Thomas makes Irwin seem pragmatic rather than shallow: it is his astute cramming technique that wins the boys' places as much as it is Hector's avuncular humanism. But, as the ultimate authority, Nicholas Day's apoplectic response to the laying-on of hands makes the headmaster seem less like a narrow-minded figure of fun than a furious voice of reason.

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Rating: 4/5

Alfred Hickling

Wagner 200 in London – review

Martin Kettle — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:23:07 GMT

Royal Festival Hall, London

Wagner in the concert hall is an inevitable compromise, but this 200th-birthday anniversary concert, which also launched London's Wagner 200 festival, lacked nothing for commitment to the master's cause. The Bayreuth-style triple fanfare summonses into the hall before both parts of the concert were a nice celebratory touch, while Sir Andrew Davis, who made a short speech beforehand, is a conductor who has always revelled in special occasions.

With a programme comprising the Meistersingers overture, the Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan and the third act of Die Walküre, this was a greatest-hits evening. But although it was fundamentally a celebration of Wagner himself, it was also a showcase of the rich and continuing British Wagnerian tradition, with all the principal singers and the conductor native born, and not a German in sight.

Davis's Wagnerian credentials may surprise. He has conducted little of the composer's work in the UK, but in his long years in charge of Chicago's Lyric Opera he has turned himself into a thoroughly reliable Wagner conductor, with an excellent sense of line and structure that was particularly evident in the Walküre act, ingeniously and atmospherically semi-staged on a shoestring by David Edwards.

Susan Bullock was the evening's vocal lynchpin, characteristically sympathetic and intelligent as both Isolde and Brünnhilde. As in the Covent Garden Ring last autumn, the lightness of her upper register and a troublesome vibrato in the Liebestod made Bullock, in the end, an artfully touching rather than instinctive exponent of these roles. James Rutherford's Wotan was full and visceral of voice in just the way Bullock is not, while lacking, as yet, some of the vocal refinement with which she is so endowed. Giselle Allen blazed in Sieglinde's brief appearance, and Katherine Broderick's big sound stood out in an excitingly wild bunch of Valkyries.

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Rating: 4/5

Martin Kettle

Bern Ballett: Witch-Hunt – review

Judith Mackrell — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:21:10 GMT

Royal Opera House, London

In 1782, as Europe was embracing the spirit of Enlightenment, a small town in Switzerland tortured and killed a woman for witchcraft. An eight-year-old girl, Annamiggeli Tschudi, accused the family servant, Anna Goldi, of magically filling her stomach with needles. Cathy Marston's new work attempts to tells the story of how a small child could have formed so horrific an idea. Played out against the formal beauties of baroque music in the Royal Opera House's Linbury studio space, Witch-Hunt teases out the demons of guilt, fear and repression that generated the tragedy.

It's essentially a story told three times, as the adult Annamiggeli (played by actor Mona Kloos) replays its events, hunting for the truth through the tangle of Anna's childhood perceptions. Each time, she edges towards the realisation that her own fascination for the beautiful servant had become darkened by anguish over her unlovably neurotic mother, and anger over the attraction between Anna and her father.

Marston's choreography fleshes out the scenario with skill. Bright-eyed, loose-limbed Clemmie Sveass is a force of nature within the introvert Tschudi family, and she all but overwhelms the awkward child, prone to convulsive, clinging demands for affection. She clearly entrances the emotionally starved father, and their climactic duet is one of the work's most powerful sections – charged with a breathless, transgressive energy that contrasts turbulently with the formal patterning of the ensemble.

Witch-Hunt nearly ranks as Marston's best work, but is increasingly dragged down by its uniform pace. Recycling the same material, albeit with different emphases, is a risky manoeuvre, and it's made more so by the naturally muted, inward focus of Marston's style. By the end, none of the imagery on stage has matched the piercing intensity of those fantasy needles, lodged so fatally inside little Annamiggeli's mind.

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Rating: 3/5

Judith Mackrell

Neighbors – review

Lyn Gardner — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:21:07 GMT

Nuffield, Southampton

From Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park to David Mamet's Race – soon to hit the UK – American theatre is currently much concerned with racial tensions. Like Clybourne Park, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's report from the frontline of neighbourly relations begins with anxieties around property. Richard, Jean and their teenage daughter, Melody, have recently moved back to the US east coast so that Richard, who is African American, can take up a university lectureship in classics. When a black family buy the empty house next door, Richard is determined that he and Jean, who is white, will have nothing to do with them. In fact, when he catches a glimpse of them he uses the N-word. That might be because the new arrivals are a fully blacked-up travelling minstrel troupe lead by Mammy, who might have wandered in from Gone with the Wind, the swaggering Sambo, who has an unusual sexual relationship with watermelons, and "pickaninny" Topsy.

The cleverness of Jacobs-Jenkins' conceit lies in its examination of how the cultural past infects present relationships, and its metatextuality: in a play-within-a-play, the new family's provocative minstrel show both embraces and satirises stereotypes. Soon the jobless, lonely Jean strikes up a friendship with Zip Coon, and finds herself questioning her relationship with not just her husband but black men more widely. For her part, Melody finds she much prefers life in the neighbours' house, where she has a burgeoning romance with young Jim Crow.

It's a bold idea, and there are moments when laughter and shock combine to terrific effect. But Jacobs-Jenkins's inability to marry the cartoonish elements of this setup with a domestic drama of Richard's self-loathing and Jean's liberal confusions means the whole thing often misfires. It is never quite funny or shocking enough – or even uncomfortable enough – for an audience to watch. In the end, it feels more like a two-and-a-half-hour sketch for a play, rather than the real thing.

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Rating: 3/5

Lyn Gardner

Disgraced, Bush theatre

Michael Billington — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:21:04 GMT

Bush, London

We're used to seeing plays that take a swipe at American liberal guilt. But Ayad Akhtar's Pulitzer prizewinner adds an extra dimension to the subject by exposing the dangers of denying one's racial and religious inheritance. It's not perfect, but it's a tough, compelling play that covers a lot of ground in 90 minutes and that gains an extra urgency as apparently jihadist-inspired violence returns to our streets.

Everything starts on a note of deceptive serenity. Akhtar's hero, Amir, is a thriving New York corporate lawyer; his wife, Emily, is an up-and-coming artist who has adopted Islamic forms in her work. But Amir, who has forsworn his Muslim inheritance and concealed his Pakistani origins, finds his past catching up with him when he reluctantly agrees to his nephew's request to help defend an unjustly accused imam. This not only jeopardises Amir's position in the law firm; it also leads to the unravelling of his assumed identity, when he and Emily host a dinner party for an influential Jewish art-curator and his African-American wife, who happens to be a legal colleague of Amir's.

The play follows a classic Aristotelian structure: you see Amir's tragic flaw when he arrogantly tells his nephew that he has transcended old-fashioned racial stereotypes through sheer "intelligence". Akhtar also plots his hero's downfall with a remorseless logic and shows, with ironic cunning, how a liberal action in the cause of justice leads to Amir's undoing. But, without giving the game away, I think the playwright overplays his hand. Gripping as the dinner party is, there's a big leap from Amir's attacks on the Qur'an to his admission of a blush of pride at 9/11. Also, while the play's point is that we have to be true to who and what we are, I fail to see why Amir's wife is "naive" in her adoption of Islamic styles: by that logic, Picasso was wrong to use African forms for his sculptures, and Matisse mistaken to base much of his work on Moghul miniatures.

But the play's occasional lapses are camouflaged in a superb production by Nadia Fall, who did such a meticulous job last summer with The Doctor's Dilemma at the National. Fall astutely balances the play's symmetrical neatness with a wealth of character detail, and the acting is impeccable. Hari Dhillon as Amir, a smooth man in Charvet shirts, disintegrates with utter conviction, and Kirsty Bushell is outstanding as Emily, charting every stage of her conflict between devotion and independence. Nigel Whitmey as the art curator, Sara Powell as his order-loving wife and Danny Ashok as Amir's intransigent nephew also adorn a production that arrives with horrific timeliness.

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Rating: 4/5

Michael Billington

Robert Newman – review

Brian Logan — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:21:02 GMT

Little Angel, London

"I know what you're thinking," says Rob Newman, introducing another riff on genetics, social Darwinism and the high-water mark of free-market capitalism: "Rob, if we'd wanted that, we'd go to Jongleurs." Premiering his first show in seven years at a puppet theatre in Islington, Newman couldn't be further from that comedy-club franchise, or indeed the mainstream. Which is just as he likes it. In The New Theory of Evolution, the activist-standup marshals a PhD's worth of information – and conjecture – to contend that it's cooperation, not competition, that drives species development. It's an absorbing 90 minutes, even if the comedy feels like an add-on to Newman's real business of reversing 40 years of neocon ideology.

It's the ideas that are most compelling, and Newman's faith in standup as a vehicle to transmit them. He starts by asking why Herbert Spencer's view of evolution ("survival of the fittest") has prevailed over Darwin's more nuanced take. It's ideology, says Newman: big business wanted to roll back the gains of postwar social democracy, and selfish-gene theory offered them scientific legitimacy. But nature is just as rich in examples of selflessness as ruthlessness. Newman is armed with dozens of them.

They're not always comical. Newman doesn't impose his performing talent on proceedings: he's shambling and distracted, as if technique might undermine his moral seriousness. It wouldn't: there are some fine gags here, like his description of Question Time as representing "the full range of millionaire opinion". Others, including two weak ukulele ditties, seem tokenistic, and muddy the clarity of an argument that might be more effectively made if it stopped masquerading as comedy. But why should lectures and entertainment compete, and not cooperate? I like Newman's argument, and I find his attempt to marry standup, biology and political history awkward and endearing in equal measure.

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Rating: 4/5

Brian Logan

Clash city rockers: talking to Mick Jones and Paul Simonon

Michael Hann — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:11:06 GMT

The two surviving founder members of the Clash take a break from remixing the retrospective Sound System box set to reminisce about going to the pictures, sharp clothes and rock'n'roll

The days of London's Burning are long gone. For a start, you can't go "up and down the Westway / in and out the lights" any more, because while the overpass the Clash romanticised is still there, the lights aren't. From the top floor of Damon Albarn's studios in west London, we – Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and I – can see the lamp-posts cut short like a string of London's plane trees cut back to the trunk. The guitarist and bassist are no longer angry young punks, either – instead, they're startlingly well-dressed middle-aged men, Simonon handrolling his cigarettes, and Jones offering non-sequitur asides as if he's walked off the set of some half-forgotten old radio comedy.

They are here to promote a pair of compilations that will emerge at the summer's end. Sound System is a box set, containing the first five Clash albums remastered, plus a plethora of rarities in both audio and visual form, along with the usual assortment of bright shiny trinkets. The Clash Hits Back is a two-CD best-of, sequenced to copy the setlist from a show at the Brixton Fair Deal – now the Academy – in July 1982. That a new Clash compilation and box set – the sixth and the third, respectively – can still generate excitement is testimony to both the affection in which the band are held, and the sense that, for all the decades that have passed since their demise, no British rock'n'roll band since has challenged them for ambition, scope and pure excitement.

Why was the Brixton show so significant that you copied the setlist for The Clash Hits Back?

Mick Jones: I don't know!

Paul Simonon: We're from the Brixton area, and I used to go there – it used to be called the Brixton Astoria – for Saturday-morning pictures. It's actually where I saw my first ever pop show. We all turned up as 10-year-olds, and they said: "Right, boys and girls, we've got a special surprise for you – we're not going to show you a film!" So everyone was "Booooo." "No, we've got a special surprise – we have Sandie Shaw!" And Sandie Shaw came on, and she was going on about not having any shoes. So we had an hour set from her, and that was my first pop concert.

MJ: We used to bunk in, which was quite difficult. In those days, on a Saturday night, it would be thousands of people – as many people as you get to a gig at the Academy. You'd have that but the whole place would be packed – before video, before anything. That was the social hub. On weekdays and in holidays, one of us would shin up a drainpipe and go through the open window to the loos, right, and then come down and open the door and we'd all pile in. It would generally be an X.

PS: I wanted to see Hell's Angels '69, but they said: "No mate, you're too young."

MJ: And I was also in the ABC Minors up the road at the Fridge. I was in a twist competition!

PS: I used to go to the ABC as well and occasionally I went to the Classic.

MJ: The Classic! The fleapit, which is now the Ritzy. They used to show two movies, but also you'd come when the doors opened about 12.45, and then you could sit there all the way through till the evening and it was time to go home. They'd usually be dubbed into English …

PS: From Italian.

MJ: … but I didn't notice the out-of-syncness at the time.

PS: I remember at the ABC they brought someone in from the audience to hold this torch and whoever this torch landed on got a free ice-cream. They were going round the room and suddenly said: "Oi, mate, you've won a free ice-cream" – it had landed on me. So I got a free ice-cream, which was not comfortable – 'cos you're enjoying free ice-cream and everyone else is looking at you, with no ice-cream.

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How much did your setlists vary from show to show?

MJ: Quite considerably. Obviously there were some numbers that always had to be in there. Joe [Strummer] actually physically did the list, but we all made our suggestions.

PS: One thing that crossed my mind the other day was that it was probably quite a challenge for Joe, trying to remember the lyrics for a song that maybe we hadn't played for a while. Now I understand why before we went on he used to be mumbling in the corner – obviously he'd be going over the lyrics of a song that we'd just reintroduced. It's about building up the show, reaching a natural plateau, then taking it on. But sometimes things would be thrown in because of the circumstances of what was happening within the gig. If there was a riot going on, then obvoiously we're going into Armagideon Time.

How had you changed as a live band between 1976 and 1982?

PS: For myself, I'd become musically more capable. I could take off the notes that were painted on the neck of my guitar. But then I did make a mistake in being really confident: I went for one of those jazz basses that didn't have frets …

MJ: Your thumb was growing so big. He hit his thumb with a hammer! It was the only way he could play!

PS: It didn't have any frets. And when it goes really dark, and you can't quite hear what you're playing, it suddenly sounds like you're drunk. So I said: "You know what? I think I'll have the frets put back on." I got a bit carried away. I thought I was getting quite good, but I got a big slap in the face.

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You were always very dynamic onstage – was that rehearsed or spontaneous?

PS: There were certainly aspects – if he's gonna run across stage like that, then I'm gonna run across this way. And if he can jump that high, then I'm gonna jump this high! There was competition with each other on stage, too.

MJ: As we became more pompous.

PS: Pompous? When? What, with my crown and my sceptre? Yeah, I remember that. And the ermine furs on your combat outfit.

MJ: We didn't really choreograph it though. It just developed.

But you must have given some of your moves some thought: like the three of you walking up to the mics on I Fought the Law, the single most thrilling sight in guitar music …

MJ: Oh yeah …

PS: That's when the backing vocals are coming in, so you're standing around playing and then – Oh it's time for the backing vocals – and everyone leans in.

MJ: We got good at looking at what's going on out of the corner of your eye.

PS: You knew what everybody else was doing.

MJ: There was great chemistry between us, and we was kind of mindreading.

PS: But it became extra important because [the pair stand up to assume their onstage positions, leaving a space in the middle where Strummer would be] Mick would be there, I would be here and Joe would be there, and we'd have leads from our guitars. So I know if I run over this way, and Mick goes over this way [the two jog past each other, miming carrying their instruments], I've got to remember that when I come back I've got to go through the front of him.

MJ: Otherwise it's like this [mimes pulling apart a tangle of leads]. All a tangle. The bits you don't see is us scrabbling around the stage trying to unravel our leads

PS: Sometimes you'd get a Gordian knot of guitar cables and we couldn't get any closer to the mic 'cos we were all constricted.

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Did you nick stage moves from anyone?

PS: Yeah, Wilko Johnson.

MJ: Johnny Thunders.

PS: Hearing that Wilko was very unwell made me think a lot about him. I remember the first Clash album cover, I'm almost wearing Wilko's clothes. I used to wear a jacket similar to this [he's wearing a tailored midnight blue jacket] with that outfit, and so, yeah, Wilko was a big influence. And in other ways so was Pete Townshend because he jumped around. He made the show look exciting. Those were the main two.

MJ: It was Keith Richards for me, and Johnny Thunders. And then me.

Did you have to rethink your music and your objectives after the initial explosion of punk burned itself out?

PS: I remember having a conversation with Joe where we were going: "What are we going to sing about now?" That was really an issue, because we'd just signed the deal with the record company. We thought: "Great! We've got a hundred grand! Let's buy a club!" Not realising that this money is just on loan, really. It's not yours to keep.

MJ: We always wanted to buy a club. Always. That's what we would say, wasn't it? Buy a club – that would be what you'd do when you had some money.

Would you have wanted to be lumbered with a disaster like the Haçienda, though?

MJ: How can you say the Haçienda went wrong? Wow!

Well, the members of New Order have spent 20 years moaning about how broke it left them …

MJ: Sometimes you have to take that leap of faith. And buy a club!

How deliberate was the way the Clash changed from album to album, or was it more a reflection of your changing listening habits?

PS: In some ways we didn't think: "Oh, this had to be different". It journeyed that way. It just evolved.

MJ: You should never ever make the same record twice. Do something different every time – that's a given. What it is, is where you are at that time – it reflects where you're at. A record tells you a lot about the artist's life, but also a lot about your own life – that's what I got out of the records I listened to. They told me how I might be able to live my life. You've got to reach out in every direction and embrace everything,

PS: With cross-pollination between the four of us, our influences came out more and more.

MJ: That's what I'm trying to say – the chemistry of the four us is so unique. But also each person is the sum of their experiences when they play music. You're expressing yourself in a way that is not quantifiable.

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The way the Clash was presented – in clothes, in posters, in images – was very important, wasn't it?

PS: Totally. You could put it down to a very basic thing [Clash manager] Bernie Rhodes said to me once. He said: "Why is an audience going to listen to what you've got to say if they're better dressed than you?" So if you think about that in the bigger picture, everything's important because it reflects what you're about as a band. If you say: "I don't care about the posters, I just do the music," you're underselling yourself. It's all important. A lot of the looks were down to financial problems. Everyone in those days wore flares and had long hair. So if you went into secondhand stores, there'd be so many straight-legged trousers because everyone wanted flares. That instantly set you apart from everybody else. And also there was another place called Laurence Corner …

MJ: Selling army surplus …

PS: … and you could dress it up accordingly. Somebody would wear one thing, and someone else would think: "That's good." For example, Johnny Thunders came over. We always wore Dr Martens, but me and Joe saw his boots and said: "Wow, where d'you get those boots from?" And he said: "There's place called Hudson's in New York." So when we got to New York, we went straight to the shop and bought these motorcycle boots like these [Simonon holds up leg to show he still wears them], which we wore all the time, and people started calling them "Clash boots". And when we left Great Britain and started touring other places in the world, we'd pick up stuff. Like in America there was a surplus of 50s clothing that was next to nothing – nobody wanted it, in the same way as the straight-legged trousers. So we'd buy it and bring it back, and it was like: "Wow – this is like what Gene Vincent would wear." And then it became mixed in with what we had.

MJ: You could get some really cool stuff in thrift stores in the US. Even guitars. Good guitars.

PS: The other thing that was important was that it wasn't just something you wore onstage. You wore it offstage, too. What was really good about the beginning of the whole punk thing is you would leave London and go to Teesside or anywhere up north and there'd be kids turning up who'd got their shirt and cut the sleeves off or splattered it with paint and done something themselves – it was DIY, which was really important.

MJ: It was good to see how things built up in those days. The first time you'd play at a place, there'd be a few punks. The next time, there'd be a few more. And the next time, you couldn't get in. There was a curiosity [from new fans] – "Not sure what this is." Then they'd see what it was and they'd do their version of it. You could see it grow in that way. It was fantastic. I didn't see it at the time – I was just following the music – but I see it now, in retrospect.

PS: It's important the clothing thing, in lots of ways.

MJ: It was a statement.

What was it like to revisit the old music to remaster it for the Sound System box set?

MJ: Remastering's a really amazing thing. That was the musical point of it all. Because there's so much more there that you wouldn't have heard before, it was like discovering stuff, because the advances in mastering are immense since the last time it was remastered, in the 90s.

PS: It's interesting about the mastering because I heard Safe European Home, and it's got a whole guitar part I never heard before. It's buried …

MJ: I've probably never heard it! It's probably some session musician, when I was asleep! It's tunes you're familiar with, but you're hearing stuff you never heard before. So the concept of the whole thing is: best box set ever.

Punk seems to have been more of a vehicle for you – a way to get where you wanted – rather than a destination. Is that fair?

PS: We were only punk in so far as that was what we were called. We were essentially a rock'n'roll band.

MJ: No, we were a punk group – the idea of it …

PS: … was the nature of what we did in the beginning.

MJ: We come from punk … De La Punk!

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What would have happened to the Clash had you been able to carry on? Would you have kept your dignity, or become a musical pantomime?

MJ: You what? Only if I get the front of the horse! Who gets the back? There'd be three people fighting in the front of the horse!

PS: We'd all have one horse each, with a saggy bit behind us. Obviously at some point we'd grown up to a certain point …

MJ: Like Thumbelina! We've grown up now.

PS: … and then our complexities and differences of opinion meant it petered out. Once we'd kicked Mick out. And Topper [Headon, the drummer].

MJ [laughing hard]: There wasn't anybody left! That's why!

PS: Somebody said: "I'll give you a million pound each to reform," and we said no. It got so ridiculous, and money wasn't even going to be a consideration anyway. We came and did what we did and now let's move on. Say Joe was still around, I still think don't think it would have happened.

The final Clash album – 1985's Cut the Crap, with no Jones or Headon – has been expunged from history. Why?

PS: There were a lot of good songs on it, but what's disappointing is that 'cos me and Mick used to bicker in the studio …

MJ: That was a good thing!

PS: It was a good thing. And when we came to doing Cut the Crap, I said to Joe: "D'you know what? I'm going to step back and let you make the record, so I'm not this bickering voice." And I stood back and let him take control. What I didn't know, and found out later, is that Bernie took control and Joe walked away from it as well. So in the end it became Bernie's record. There are some great songs on it, but they're smothered in unnecessaries that made it really cloudy. It could have been a great record.

MJ: It's not the Clash. The Clash is the three of us, and the two drummers.

At least you managed to repair your friendships quickly after Mick was sacked.

MJ: Oh, very soon. That was the amazing thing. There was only a short time when we weren't really talking to each other.

PS: When me and Joe came and got involved in your video [for the 1985 single The Medicine Show by Jones's post-Clash group Big Audio Dynamite], in some ways that was a visual statement saying: "We're friends. We're OK."

Was the Gorillaz Plastic Beach tour in 2010 the first time you'd played together onstage since the Clash?

PS: More or less. We did play at a party once. Damon asked me: "Do you think Mick would be up for coming on tour." "I'll ask him." It was a celebration of a great record, and a great idea in bringing all these musicians together to go out on this tour together. I think we had seven tour buses, there was so many people.

MJ: I did enjoy it. Getting to visit some new places and revisit some old ones. The great thing about doing that is that the more people are onstage, the less you have to do. My job was basically meet-and-greeter for my section of the stage, 'cos that was the side of the stage where people came on. So I met and greeted the people and escorted them to the centre of the stage, and it was very nice. Paul was on the other side and we were like wingmen. It was very nice to be able to sit on top of an orchestra and just underpin certain things. It was a beautiful experience for me. I was never big on rehearsals before that. But Damon's very big on them, and now I realise the benefit, which I didn't realise before. Since then, I've been really keen on: the more you do, the better you get. Before, I just used to wing it.

PS: Not in the Clash you didn't! We was rehearsing all the bloody time!

MJ: But then I dropped off in the intervening years. I thought: "Oh, I don't have to practise because now I know what I want to do in my head I can just do it." But that was obviously a misjudgment and now I'm back on it. I'd forgotten how important rehearsals are.

PS: Also it was a very structured set-up in some ways, Gorillaz. There's a lot of freedom within it, but there's a screen behind you that the drummer has to be in sync with. But we played in LA, at a dress rehearsal for fans, and Bobby Womack started singing the verse again when he should have been singing the chorus, and I thought, you always follow the singer to back him up, and suddenly I was out of sync with the whole band. Fortunately, it was only for one song, but I learned: "I'm just gonna stick with the regime."

Finally, any regrets about the Clash – missed opportunities, anything like that?

MJ: Can I just sound like Edith Piaf?

PS: Are you going to say it in French? I have no regrets. I'm the kind of person who looks forward, to what I'm doing.

And what are you doing?

Both, simultaneously, before collapsing in gales of laughter: Working on the box set!

The Sound System box set and The Clash Hits Back will be released on Columbia on 9 September.

Michael Hann

Jerry Lewis: women doing broad comedy bothers me

Andrew Pulver — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:01:55 GMT

French favourite Jerry Lewis, 87, presents new movie and keeps press – mostly – in stitches at the Cannes film festival

The French adoration of comic Jerry Lewis is a legendary, and the country at last got its wish: Lewis has a film at the Cannes film festival for the first time since 1989, and the 87-year-old duly turned up to receive the plaudits, waspishly shouting "[The French] kept me alive for 50 years!"

The film in question, Max Rose, was written and directed by Daniel Noah, and casts Lewis as a newly-widowed jazz pianist (also 87) who is concerned that his entire apparently-happy marriage may have been illusory, and that his recently-deceased wife may have been in love with another man.

At his press conference, Lewis was vocal in his praise for the film. "I thought it was the best script I'd read in 40 years … it's an incredible movie, that's going to give a lot of people a lot of pleasure. Daniel Noah wrote from his heart and put it on paper."

More specifically, he felt the film made a valuable contribution to cinema about the elderly. "It's a wonderful thing to think about people who are ordinarily ignored, and the elderly taught us all, we know everything we know from them."

But Lewis' comedic instincts reasserted themselves, and he regularly had the French press corps in stitches. When one journalist asked him about his "artistic and human relationship" with onetime partner Dean Martin, Lewis gazed at him levelly and quipped: "He died, you know." It brought the house down.

Lewis turned serious when another journalist asked him why he had he had never allowed anyone to see his legendarily disastrous concentration camp comedy The Day the Clown Cried, which he had written and directed in 1972 but promptly suppressed. "I thought the work was bad. I lost the magic, and that's all I can tell you. No one will ever see it, because I'm embarrassed… I believed in the work and the way it should have been, and it wasn't."

The only sour note came when Lewis was challenged on his low estimation of women doing broad comedy. "It bothers me," Lewis said. On being asked who his favourite female comedians were, he cracked up his audience by naming Cary Grant and Burt Reynolds, before saying "I don't have any," as the laughter billowed around him.

But France appears to forgive Lewis anything. After a fulsome tribute from fellow comic Pierre Étaix, who worked with Lewis on The Day the Clown Cried, the entire press room erupted in applause; and shortly thereafter, as Lewis exited, shouts of "Jerry! Jerry!" resounded around the Palais. The man's still got it.

Andrew Pulver

The Secret Henhouse Theatre by Helen Peters - review

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:00:00 GMT

'I suddenly found myself plunging into a terrific book that I really didn't want to end'!

At first, I was actually quite disappointed with this book. Although, the cover was so beautiful and looked so eye-catching on my book shelf, it did have a lot to live up to. Hannah, an 11 year old farm girl, is the star of this story. Her one love is drama but she has never had a proper chance to act. So when THE most amazing theatre competition rolls round, she realises this might be her one chance to do something with her gift.

Throughout these stages of the story I was slightly bored as there really didn't seem to be enough action taking place, however, when Hannah and her best friend decide to build a theatre for there own play, the plot takes a terrifiying twist and I suddenly found myself plunging into a terrific book that I really didn't want to end. Especially when her farm becomes endangered...

I would really recommend this book. Just don't give up if your not enthralled in the beginning.

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Close up: Cannes, crime and ultraviolence

Thu, 23 May 2013 16:34:28 GMT

Catch up with the last seven days in the world of film

The big story

This time last week the biggest story coming out of Cannes was The Great Gatsby – but oh, how quickly things change. Since then critics have been getting in a lather about all manner of things, but no film has been quite as divisive as Only God Forgives, Nicholas Winding Refn's follow-up to Drive.

Starring Ryan Gosling as Julian, a westerner submerged in Bangkok's criminal underworld, it's a creepy, ultraviolent revenge tale that provoked boos and walkouts when it screened at Cannes on Wednesday – although that didn't stop Peter Bradshaw awarding it five stars while declaring that "every scene, every frame, is executed with pure formal brilliance."

Xan Brooks offered more praise (albeit slightly more reserved), while our report from the press conference found the director confessing that he approaches filmmaking "like a pornographer: it's about what arouses me … I have surely a fetish for violent emotions and images."

Also making a splash at Cannes this week have been the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis and Stephen Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, both of which are viewed as strong contenders of the Palme D'Or. Keep up with the race for the prize, and all the rest of our Cannes coverage, before the festival draws to a close this Sunday.

In the news

Steven Soderbergh memorabilia sale suggests long goodbye nearing an end

'My name is cleared at last' - film shows police brutality at Genoa G8 summit

Depardieu says Chechnya not responsible for Boston Marathon bombing

Robert Redford on America: 'Certain things have got lost'

Luke Skywalker's Star Wars jeans auctioned

Lars von Trier used body doubles to shoot Nymphomaniac

Star Trek Into Darkness writer apologises for underwear scene

Keanu Reeves' revolution: Matrix star to direct Chinese-backed kung fu film

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remake put on hold

Antonio Banderas to star in film about trapped Chilean miners

On the blog

Fast & Furious 6: has auto mayhem crashed The Great Gatsby party?

Clip joint: mind control

Man of Steel: Michael Shannon puts the fear of Zod into new Superman trailer

Leonardo DiCaprio: five best moments

Cine-files: Rebel Cinema, Bude

Watch and listen

Jeune et Jolie (Young and Beautiful): the trailer for François Ozon's new film - video

Colour footage of London in the 1920s allows us to be tourists in our own past

Wara No Tate (Shield of Straw): the trailer for Takashi Miike's new film - video

Alec Baldwin and James Toback discuss Cannes documentary Seduced and Abandoned - video interview

The Bling Ring: Emma Watson and Sofia Coppola - video interview

Video on demand

When China Met Africa

Directors Marc and Nick Francis follows various Chinese enterprises underway in Zambia – from large-scale roadbuilding to small-scale crop-growing – and underscore the uneasy relationship between the two. Watch it on demand here.

The Monastery: Mr Vig and the Nun

An award-winning film about a millionaire who wants to establish a Russian Orthodox religious order in his castle. Watch it on demand here.

The Punk Syndrome: watch the film on demand

An upbeat documentary about a punk band from Finland, whose members are all learning-disabled. Watch it on demand here.

• For more of the best independent, cult or classic films and documentaries chosen by Guardian Film, keep an eye on the Guardian screening room

And finally

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Granta magazine rocked by spate of resignations

Alison Flood — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:13:28 GMT

Senior staff desert as owner Sigrid Rausing takes much greater control of literary magazine and publisher

A slew of high-profile departures from the prestigious literary magazine and publisher Granta has left staff reeling as owner and philanthropist Sigrid Rausing steps up to take full control of the company.

Over the past month Granta Magazine editor John Freeman and deputy editor Ellah Allfrey have both resigned. Its art director and associate editor are also leaving. Earlier this week Philip Gwyn Jones, Granta's books publisher, said he was quitting, and further departures are possible.

The situation was described by one insider as a "total shit storm", and by another as a "complete bloody disaster". It is understood to boil down to a desire by Granta's owner to save money, as the company continues to make a loss.

"I really don't understand what is happening here," said the Booker prize-winning novelist Peter Carey, a contributor to the magazine.

"I always assumed the owners were prepared to fund Granta out of love for literature. They got in good people and published good books, and underwrote a fabulous magazine – all regardless (obviously) of profit or loss – and then suddenly there's this purge.

"It's crazy because it undoes all the good work and they have to start all over again. If there's another John Freeman out there, I doubt he'll be applying. Maybe they don't know whether they want to run it for its own sake or to make money. Very strange."

The changes have perplexed the literary community, coming as the magazine had recently announced its Best of Young British Novelists list, and has plans for a range of new international editions.

Recent publicity has not all been positive, however. The novelists list received mixed reviews, Freeman was criticised for saying Leeds was "out of the literary world" and the party organised to celebrate the issue's launch was so poorly organised Granta had to issue an apology.

Freeman said in an emailed statement that "Sigrid decided a while back she wanted to run the magazine and books on a very reduced staff", and that he "didn't want to be part of that change, or the smaller ship, because I've seen us make huge reductions in our losses by growing. Working as a team".

"I decided it was a good time to get out. And I quit," he said. "I'll miss it, though, we had a lot of fun and a lot of momentum, so did the books.

"I got to work with great writers. Tremendous editors who would chew through steel for this magazine. It's a great magazine. But in the end it is her property and as she's showing she's going to do with it what she wants."

The new structure will see Rausing take over "full operational and executive control of the company", with the roles of magazine editor (previously held by Freeman) and books executive publisher (previously held by Gwyn Jones) "to be merged into the new single editorial-only role of editor-in-chief, a position that will be filled later this summer", said Granta, announcing Gwyn Jones's departure. The editor-in-chief will both edit the magazine and commission books for the Granta and Portobello imprints.

Gwyn Jones, who declined to comment about the reasons for his departure, said in a statement that Rausing "is ready now to take over the running of the team, and I wish her all luck with this next phase in Granta's illustrious history".

Asked why so many staff have left, Rausing said: "People have left for different reasons, not all of them related.

"John Freeman wanted to re-locate to New York, and decided to leave, which led us to the decision to close the NYC office. His deputy, Ellah Allfrey, felt that with a new London-based editor, her own job would change, and she decided that she wanted to pursue other things.

"Michael Salu, our art director, wanted to go freelance, which meant closing our art department. And Philip Gwyn-Jones is leaving because his role as executive publisher became redundant when I decided to take those aspects on myself."

"Closing the NYC office, and the art department, will certainly be a cost saving," she continued. "Publishing is going through rocky times – we are lucky because I can afford the subsidy, which means that we can do things that maybe harder for other publishers. The magazine I don't think will ever be profitable, but I am certainly hoping that the book side will make money."

On bringing the magazine and the publishing side closer together, Rausing confirmed this is her intention, "without making the magazine into a trade-mag for Granta books, obviously … Granta will continue to publish the great books we already do - there won't be any changes there."

Granta magazine can trace its history back to 1889, when it was founded by Cambridge students. It can count amongst its contributors AA Milne, Ted Hughes and Stevie Smith.

In the 1970s it ran into money troubles, and was rescued and relaunched as a magazine of new writing, publishing names from Martin Amis to Zadie Smith. Granta Books was launched in 1989. The operation was bought by Rausing, one of the heirs to the multibillion-pound Tetra Pak empire, in 2005.

Alison Flood

Afghanistan's heritage dilemma

Emma Graham-Harrison — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:13:06 GMT

Quest for copper riches in Mes Aynak develops as battle between culture and commerce

The ruins of Mes Aynak straddle a copper deposit so rich that many of the rocks are brilliant green with oxidised ore from a seam of metal first exploited 5,000 years ago.

The remaining copper cannot be extracted without destroying not just the ruins but the entire hill they perch on, and efforts to develop the mine have often been cast as a battle between the heartless miners and valiant archaeologists, racing against time to save their heritage.

The Alliance for the Restoration of Cultural Heritage (Arch), a US non-profit organisation, has led a publicity campaign to prevent the mine, as currently envisaged, from going ahead. It has been so successful that the World Bank office in Kabul faces an internal investigation for supporting the dig and the mine development.

But none of Arch's four directors have a background in cultural heritage, and several have connections to US mining companies interested in Afghan contracts. They are Zalmay Khalilzad, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan, his wife, his business associate in the lobbying firm Gryphon Partners, and a well-travelled restaurateur.

Khalilzad has been openlycritical of China's mining companies and a bidding system that he argues favours them in Afghanistan, the country where he was born and later returned as the first US ambassador after the fall of the Taliban. "The performance of Chinese companies is improving but they have a long way to go," he wrote in a 2011 opinion article for Foreign Policy entitled How many ways can we lose in Afghanistan, which criticised Chinese firms on issues including protection of cultural heritage. "It is certainly ironic that Chinese firms are at an advantage over western companies due to defence department procedures," he wrote, before ending on a slightly less gloomy note: "It is not inevitable that Afghanistan's valuable resources fall into the hands of the Chinese."

Afghan archeologists and experts working on mining have a more complex view of the mine's impact than Arch. Abdul Qadir Temori, head of the Afghan Institute of Archeology, who has committed his entire team of more than 30 graduate archaeologists to Mes Aynak, says the site is so complex and fascinating that experts could easily spend two decades picking over it.

In an ideal world that would be the case, he says. But Afghanistan is desperately poor and has suffered 30 years of violence, which means leaving artefacts in the ground offers little guarantee of preservation.Desperation and lawlessness have fuelled a ruthlessly efficient looting industry, and before the mining guards sealed off the site, looters stripped Mes Aynak of treasures that had been buried untouched for centuries, and destroyed beautiful buildings and crucial archeological evidence in the process. Just a few dozen miles away is Kharwar, another ancient site that may be even richer in remains, but has been described by the UN as "in danger of complete destruction". Without security or funds for excavation, only looters are picking through its treasures.

"Kharwar is possibly more beautiful than Mes Aynak, almost the same age," said SM Raheen, the minister of culture and information. "Unfortunately looting is going on there, but no one pays any attention … I don't know why everybody cares just about Mes Aynak."

The mine will ultimately destroy Mes Aynak, but it may also save it from leaving no record or legacy. The urgent need to salvage the site has brought an influx of funds for archaeologists, creating probably the biggest excavation project the country has seen and plans for a storage site for the treasures that are dug up, either in Kabul or near the mine.

The expensive, and extensive mine security has allowed work to go ahead in an area that would otherwise be largely controlled by the Taliban, more famous for blowing up the great Buddhas of Bamiyan than supporting cultural projects.

Archaeologists working on the ancient Afghan town, and the spectacular Buddhist temples around the settlements and smelters, are quietly confident they can rescue the majority of its treasures before it vanishes. Experts discuss stabilising foam, steel reinforcements and the merits of plucking stupas out whole or painstakingly dismantling them stone by stone, then rebuilding them in a permanent museum. "When thieves target a site, they destroy 10 pieces to steal two pieces," Raheen added when asked about the mine and its impact. "This project has been helpful, to save the site. Otherwise it would face the same fate as Kharwar."

Emma Graham-Harrison

What would you like Pina Bausch's company to perform? - open thread

Judith Mackrell — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:10:00 GMT

Tanztheater Wuppertal has appointed a new artistic director to take the company in a different direction and commission new works. But can anyone live up to Pina Bausch?

When Pina Bausch died suddenly in the summer of 2009, her company were bereft. But since then, Tanztheater Wuppertal have thrived. They've reached a new global audience via the entrancing Wim Wenders documentary Pina; and under the joint direction of Dominic Mercy and Robert Sturm they've been tirelessly touring Bausch's extensive repertory of work. However when I interviewed Sturm and Mercy back in 2010 they were clear that there was only a limited period of time in which the company could survive solely on its past. Last month, they announced the appointment of dancer Lutz Förster, who as new artistic director will start the process of commissioning new works to complement the Bausch repertory.

At first sight you'd think the company would be spoilt for choice – Bausch was one of the world's most influential choreographers, spawning hundreds of dancemakers in her image. Yet as Mercy predicted in 2010, the hardest task would be treading the line between work that was sympathetic to Bausch's voice and work that was simply derivative: as he told me then "we have to find something new that's authentic and honest".

Mercy was also acutely aware of the difficulties experienced by the Martha Graham Company during the last two decades, as it has tried to achieve a convincing balance between old and new. (Ironically one of its most successful recent commissions has been from Richard Move, a solo performer/choreographer who made his career performing brilliant, but deviant pastiches of Graham herself). So which choreographers should the Wuppertal company start to commission? And what kind of works would fans accept as stage fellows to magisterial Bausch classics such as Rite of Spring, Nelken, and Palermo Palermo, or recent favourites like Der Fensterputzer and Vollmond?

Judith Mackrell

Liz Hurley and Gérard Depardieu's Chechnya adventure: the story so far

Marina Hyde — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:48:33 GMT

The 'actress' is in Grozny, shooting a film with the French bon viveur, and hanging out with colourful Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov. But, best of all, Steven Seagal is also in town

To a news report concerning Gerard Depardieu's views on the alleged Boston bombers, and a statement so appallingly controversial that Lost in Showbiz can still scarcely believe it. "Speaking in the southern Russian province of Chechnya, where he is shooting a movie with British actress Elizabeth Hurley, Depardieu said: 'I agree with [Chechen president] Ramzan Kadyrov who said that the Tsarnaev brothers have a Chechen last name, but their upbringing is American.'"

I'm sorry, but WHAT? Tell me I didn't just read that. And yet, there it is in black and white: "where he is shooting a movie with British actress Elizabeth Hurley".

Mine eyes!

For a long time, it has seemed as though the "actress" part of Liz's Twitter biography – "mum, model, actress, bikini designer, organic farmer" – were more of a nod to past glories than an ongoing situation which requires a diplomatic or even military response. Indeed, Lost in Showbiz is chastened to admit it has been some time since it checked into Liz's IMDb page, across which even tumbleweed has blown with increasing sparsity since 2002.

Even so, this column regards itself as something of a Hurley completist. Mostly it's about discovering something new in the classics, of course: a mistimed gasp in Passenger 57, say, or a brutally cudgeled line in Bedazzled. But any new work is obviously a major event, and these sensational claims of a return to the silver screen demand an immediate IMDb visit. There, we have no mention of Turquoise, the movie she is shooting with Depardieu. But bounty of sorts exists in the form of High Midnight, a Hurley picture said to be in the pipeline and whose synopsis runs as follows: "A broken-down sheriff is forced to join forces with an obsessed Victorian vampire-hunter to defeat an undead force consuming a small frontier town in 1892 New Mexico."

Quite how far down the pipeline that will get before Dyno-Rod is summoned I should not like to say, but we seem locked on for Turquoise, given Hurley is already in Grozny. On Tuesday, the Chechen president Instagrammed a picture of the pair of them cosying up to Chanel, his pet white cat.

You probably already know that President Ramzan Kadyrov is a major nut for Instagram, upon which he posts frequent snaps that seem almost adorably kooky until you recall that he is basically a warlord-made-good whose record is so troubling that he beats even Vladimir Putin to confected human-rights awards. Aside from treating his fans to regular pictures of him with tigers and scythes and whatnot, Kadyrov has even picked a cabinet minister from his Instagram followers.

Nevertheless, this week's Hurley bilateral seems the sort of escalation that demands the finest Foreign Office brains be immediately seconded to the situation room. How long before Liz's radically manscaped fiance, Shane Warne, visits her on set in Grozny, and is co-opted as the star of a presidential Instagram in which Kadyrov appears to be hitting him for six? (My feeling is that Ramzan is a superhumanly gifted athlete in the mould of Kim Jong-il – whose first round of golf famously saw him shoot 38 under par, with 11 holes-in-one – and would take six sixes off a single Warne over.)

Then again, perhaps other worlds are already colliding. Having hosted Hurley and Depardieu in the capital on Tuesday, the president's Instagram reveals that Wednesday was reserved for honouring another guest – none other than Lost in Showbiz untouchable Steven Seagal. Oh Steven! Incapable of making a good decision where the former eastern bloc is concerned, the On Deadly Ground legend seems to have been in town to burnish Kadyrov's hardman aura. There are snaps of Seagal dining, and posing with Kadyrov's kids, and a tiger, and some T-shirted heavies who are possibly the cabinet or something. "I told him I watch his movies and I like them a lot," Kadyrov explained. "Nobility. Willpower. Honour. Qualities characteristic of Chechens. So we can say he is almost a Chechen!"

Of course, the key question is: have Liz, Gerard, Steven and Ramzan met up as a foursome? Are the out-of-towners maybe even having drinks with the prez tonight? The possibility hangs in the air like a malarial hallucination.

What we do know is a little more about Turquoise. Liz is going to play Depardieu's Russian old flame – ZOMG she's going to do a Russian accent! – and she has insisted the film is "an opportunity" to visit Chechnya. "We've made quite an invasion," she declared to reporters, almost as though the cast were Russia or the Mongols, "but we intend to make a great movie."

With Hurley, it's always about the work. However, she may wish to bear in mind the backlash suffered by other stars who have palled about with Kadyrov. A couple of years ago, the Chechen leader shipped over a flotilla of stars to help him celebrate his birthday with an extravagant televised concert, one of whom was Hilary Swank. Having initially claimed to have done her "provisory [sic] research" on his human-rights record, Swank eventually professed her attendance was a terrible mistake.

So there you have it. Hilary Swank is a multimillionaire, two-time Oscar winner who will do almost anything for an appearance fee. But – and fire up the Meat Loaf soundtrack – she won't do that. No she won't do that. And if some under-researched minion's error means she does end up doing that, then said under-researched minion will find their desk in the lift. I should tell you that Hilary sacked her manager and most of her management team in the wake of her Chechen jaunt.

As for Liz – yet to be recognised by the Academy – there are vague hints of a gathering PR storm. Once the Instagrams of her with the president surfaced, a reporter from the Independent tried to cheapen her artistic commitment with a question about Kadyrov, forcing her to declare: "I'm only here to talk about the movie." Mmm. The form book suggests that once the reviews of her performance come out, Liz will only want to talk about human-rights abuses in Chechnya. But until that moment, this situation in the North Caucusus remains developing, and one upon which we'll keep the closest of eyes.

Marina Hyde

'I'm not mad. I'm trying to heal my soul'

Xan Brooks — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:47:00 GMT

Th 84-year-old director rolled into Cannes this week to discuss his latest film La Danza de la Realidad, a magic-realist memoir of his youth. He talks about his troubled childhood, his passion for psychomagic – and why ageing doesn't trouble him

Missing, believed lost, Alejandro Jodorowsky rolls into Cannes like a conquering hero. He has a room at the Croisette and a film in the directors' fortnight – a rambunctious sidebar away from the Palais. "I am like the rain, I go where I'm needed," the director explains. "If I were in the big house, with the red carpet and photographers and all the fancy women, I would be ashamed." He has always been happier way out on the fringes.

Jodorowsky turned 84 last birthday. He has white hair, bright eyes and a crocodile smile. It is now more than four decades since he thrilled the faithful as El Topo, a mysterious gunslinger in rabbinical black, and 23 years since he last sat behind a movie camera. We thought he was a goner, that it was all over bar the obit. Instead, it transpires, the man is barely getting started.

"Look at this, I show you something," he says, leafing through the pages of the magazine at his elbow. His tour leads us through a world of glossy advertisements. "Beautiful woman – selling things. Beautiful woman – selling things. The Great Gatsby – selling watches." It is the picture of Leonardo DiCaprio that really gets his goat. "Prostitution!" he roars. "He should be ashamed."

Jodorowsky's latest film, La Danza de la Realidad, also feels like the first in that it unfolds as an exuberant magic-realist memoir of the director's own childhood, replete with iguanas, circus clowns and amputees. He shot most of the action in his hometown of Tocopilla, a dirt-poor Chilean village that he found had barely changed in the intervening decades. In a neat generational twist, the director's eldest son, Brontis, plays Jodorowsky's brutish Stalinist dad.

The whole thing was undertaken in a spirit of healing. "My father was a monster," he recalls. "A monster! I cut with my family when I was 23 and I never see them again. Oh yes, it was a terrible thing that I did. But what I am doing here is recovering them and giving them what they never had. My father had no humanity. So here, look, I am making him human."

As a boy, Jodorowsky was bullied for being Jewish and bullied for being bookish. Flight, he decided, was his only option. In Paris, he studied mime with Marcel Marceau and directed Maurice Chevalier in music-hall. In Mexico he outraged the authorities with an avant-garde theatre group. "In Mexico they want to kill me!" he marvels. "A soldier held a gun to my chest."

By the early 70s he was a star of American counter-culture. El Topo, a demented peyote western, won an ardent fan in John Lennon and it was Lennon who helped secure the funds for 1973's The Holy Mountain, in which the conquest of Mexico is re-enacted with chameleons dressed as Aztecs and toads playing conquistadors. And yet The Holy Mountain would prove too rich and wild a brew and, since then, Jodorowsky's career has been an infuriatingly stop-start affair. Here at Cannes, another festival picture (Jodorowsky's Dune) charts his endless, agonised attempts to spin a film out of the Frank Herbert fantasy tome. The film was eventually directed by David Lynch, while many of its visual ideas filtered through to Ridley Scott's Alien. Jodorowsky, for his part, was left out in the cold.

Such indignities might have undone a lesser man. Yet Jodorowsky claims to be altogether untroubled. The ticking clock means nothing to him. "Anyone who thinks they will get older and die has a big problem," he says. "Tarantino says that he will stop when he gets old because the pictures are for young people, I don't believe it. I am going to live 120 years."

Besides, he says, he has always been able to keep himself busy. At home in Paris he writes comic-books, reads the tarot and gives free lectures on his theory of "psychomagic", which strikes me as a peculiarly Jodorowskyan blend of psychotherapy and shamanistic mumbo-jumbo. "Lots of psychomagic in this film! My son playing my father. Psychomagic! The boy in the film is afraid of the night, just as I am. So he paints himself black. Psychomagic! Not afraid of the dark any more." He laughs. "People say I am mad. I am not mad. I am trying to heal my soul."

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From time to time, Jodorowsky even pops up in La Danza de la Realidad himself. He plays a kind of wise, white-bearded angel, grinning his crocodile grin and cradling the child in his arms. If he could really go back, what would he say to his bullied younger self?

"But this is what I did in the film," he says, as though I missed some crucial point; as if there is no distinction between his film and his life. "I say: 'Listen, don't suffer, I am here. You are not alone because you are with me.' I felt so alone as a boy because no one wanted to be friends with me. But I say: 'I am with you and just listen what you will do. You will be an artist, you will travel. You will be happy.'" Jodorowsky, it turns out, was who Jodorowsky was waiting for all along.

Xan Brooks

Photographer Wayne F Miller - picture of the day

Jim Powell — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:35:57 GMT

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. Photographer Wayne F Miller, who produced some of the most enduring combat images from World War II and created an excellent series of images chronicling the lives of black Americans in Chicago, died yesterday at age 94. He became a member of Magnum Photos in 1958. He aspired to 'photograph mankind and explain man to man.'

Jim Powell

Prophet boosting: the Muhammad films taking on interest in Islam

Phil Hoad — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:35:12 GMT

Two big-budget biopics of the prophet in production – difficulties around presenting his image notwithstanding – have genuine blockbuster potential, and could promote cultural dialogue

"Be a bridge!" Those are the Turkish teacher's last words to the Bosnian boy he's just pulled out of a surging torrent, before he dives back into the river to reach a second pupil. Seconds earlier, the two teenagers had been locked together – Muslim v Orthodox Christian, a knife hovering between them. But the teacher, doggy-paddling against the current, knows that religion makes no difference when lives are at stake. There's a message from on high (and we're not talking Allah) about the dangers of division between men: overhead is Sarajevo's Latin Bridge, where Archduke Franz Ferdinand received his fateful 1914 gunshot.

Turkish religious hit Selam certainly doesn't shy away from the grand gesture. That's the climax to one of its three stories, which all focus on the altruistic deeds of pious teachers in different countries; in the other two segments, two lovers find themselves a world apart in Senegal and Afghanistan. The first Turkish work to be shot on three different continents, it was No 1 in that country for five weeks through April, taking nearly $8m so far.

But don't mistake Selam for a mere local concern. It may come in a Turkish flavour, but didactic and cheesy though it is, it's also internationalist in scope, a kind of Muslim Babel aiming outwards at the world. It has a proselytising zeal, dramatising missionary work and partaking itself by making a case for Islamic values in life. The Gülen movement – the progressive, possibly political, network that some people now rate as the most influential Muslim faith organisation worldwide – provided locations and casting support. And Selam is one of several projects currently aiming to make a piercing statement on behalf of Islam with cinemal, a medium – because of the nature of image-making – with which this religious tradition arguably has compatibility issues.

There are two big-budget biopics of Muhammad – one Shia, one Sunni – in the works, in addition to one other that seems to have fallen by the wayside. That qualifies as a glut, since the last similar live-action project was 1976's The Message, from director Moustapha Akkad – a major difficulty for the aspiring chronicler being the prohibition on depicting the prophet. Iranian director Majid Majidi, whose $30m biopic began filming in October, recently pointed out: "While there are 250 films on Jesus Christ, 120 films on Moses, 80 about the other prophets and 40 films on Buddha, there is only one on the life of Prophet Muhammad. Unfortunately, we [have] failed to introduce our prophet to the western world."

Interest on this side of the planet about the subject matter has probably never been higher, but there is also an untapped market of 1.62 billion Muslims worldwide who could push this kind of project into blockbuster territory. The rival Sunni offering is working with that economy of scale in mind: produced by Qatari company Alnoor Holdings, it's not one film, but a projected celestial franchise of five to seven instalments aiming to highlight the common ground between the Abrahamaic religions, with a combined budget of $1bn; Barrie Osborne, producer of The Matrix and Lord of the Rings, is on board in an advisory capacity.

Producer Azahar Iqbal, a former climate scientist who grew up in Birmingham, England, says he is partly inspired by Hollywood's superhero films, but aims those kinds of pyrotechnics at the service of more universal, ethical concerns, to show that "power is not concentrated in one individual – but in every individual".

Islamophobia aside, these grandstanding Muhammad epics, as well as the likes of Selam, have the potential to raise the same kind of cynical responses from atheists as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. After all, you don't have to take the direct route to promote "Muslim values" – and there are plenty of Muslim film-makers who have used less strident methods. But even if you're uncomfortable about these new projects' proselytising side, they also have a healthy focus on interfaith cooperation and cultural dialogue. Iqbal says that Alnoor's series will feature Jesus and other non-Muslim figures, and that it won't be targeted solely at religious communities. Similarly Levent Demirkale, Selam's director, stresses that he was motivated by bigger things than his own religion: "What really affected us were the humanist universal values, such as cooperation of different religions and beliefs, living for other people's happiness, loving human beings, and making sacrifices for others."

You'd have to be naïve to think money wasn't also a factor at play in faith films, as well as the prestige sought by competing countries for successfully putting the cinematic gloss on Muhammad's story. But that story always been subject to reinterpretation and debate, from the hadith forwards. And with Islam now so prominent in global affairs, there's renewed room to pick at this bundle of history and legend once again.

Historian Tom Holland ran into some of the attendant difficulties with his recent revisionist history of the religion's birth, but perhaps doing the job in a medium largely unused for the purpose, partly for a less familiar western audience, will reinvigorate the telling and the truth of it. Iqbal claims his team have an innovative "concept" in mind for the prophet's person and role, radically different to The Message's unsettling gimmick of using POV camera for a Muhammad's-eye-view. This could be an origin story with some actual revelations in it.

• Next week's After Hollywood will focus on the Weinsteins' influence over world cinema. Which global cinematic stories would you like to see covered in the column? Let us know in the comments below.

Phil Hoad

Alec Baldwin: 'The movies are abandoning serious acting to television'

Catherine Shoard — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:35:00 GMT

The actor has been at Cannes making a documentary, Seduced and Abandoned, about the film festival. Here he talks about the state of his profession today

Where I've ended up, I'm pretty content. I see the people at the top of the movie business today and I compare their careers with those at the top 40 years ago. I wouldn't trade places with those that dominate today; I don't necessarily want what they have. I want the choices they have but I look at some of the films they make and think: "You could get anybody to play those parts."

They'll roll out a film like Lincoln every now and again with Kushner and Spielberg and Day-Lewis – who is someone I worship. I saw him at the SAG awards and I said: "Do you realise what your career means to other actors? You give them hope that there is still some purity in acting."

Those movies are exceptions to the rule. When I started out in the early 80s, two-thirds of the movies made were very cast specific, meaning: "We need that woman to play the psychiatrist and that man to play the judge." Now that's down to one quarter. Now they have a line item in the budget that says: "Here's how much money we're going to spend for that part – get whoever you can that's acceptable."

Cable TV is the bastion of great acting now. This is why you have this riotous celebration of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland – all these really seminal dramas. The motion-picture business is more and more abandoning serious acting to television. If they want a serious experience, people have been raised over the past 20 years to depend less and less on movies for that.

However, the apex of this business is still to make a great, great film. When Marty Scorsese said to me: "Come do The Aviator with Leo" – I adore Leo and I admire him, he's probably my favourite young actor around today; and Ryan Gosling, I love Ryan – I was elated. I wept. To go and make great movies is still the ultimate. But it's like musical chairs. They're taking away more and more chairs but the number of people circling the table trying to sit down when the music stops is the same. And now people are fighting and fighting and fighting. Now my agent calls me and says: "I got a phone call from some famous director …" and I'll get very excited and become so happy. "What did he say?" "Only five other guys have to die and you can have this part." And I go: "Oh my God, thank you."

Catherine Shoard

Cannes 2013: The Golden Cage (La Jaula de Oro) – review

Peter Bradshaw — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:34:32 GMT

Three Guatemalan teenagers' attempts to cross the murderous Mexico-US border region makes for gripping viewing

Even when Ken Loach doesn't have a film in competition in Cannes, his influence is still keenly felt. Spanish director Diego Quemada-Diez was a camera assistant on Loach's Carla's Song, Land and Freedom and Bread and Roses, and there is something very Loachian in this tough, absorbing, suspenseful drama showing in the Un Certain Regard section about three Guatemalan kids trying illegally to cross the Mexican border into the US.

He has avowedly stuck to Loach's realist directing style: shooting in narrative sequence and using a semi-improvisatory approach on location. It is interesting that while British directors such as Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard have hyper-evolved the Loach idiom into beautifully realised and photographed dramas of naturalism, Quemada-Diez is arguably closer to the gritty, grainy original.

The title comes from a Mexican ballad, Jaula de Oro, about the despair of those Mexicans who have actually made it into the US, but find it a "golden cage" because America accepts illegals' cheap labour – all the cooks and gardeners and office-cleaners – without allowing them the proper residency papers they need to rise beyond the faceless servant class. Despite this, the US is still a magnet for the poor of Latin America.

Quemada-Diez has found three excellent non-professional actors for his lead roles. Brandon López and Karen Martínez play Juan and Sara, two kids who are desperate to get out of Guatemala, along with a young Indian boy they meet, Chauk (Rodolfo Domínguez). With some US dollar bills sewn secretly into their jeans, they plan on hopping boxcars and riding the rails up through Mexico and then over the border into California, this last part requiring them to work their passage by volunteering as drug mules for the gangs running heroin through secret crossing points. At every stage, these vulnerable teenagers face danger and almost certain death from predatory criminals to whom their young lives are worth less than zero.

There is something very moving about the desperate courage shown by Juan, Sara and Chauk as they battle northwards. Sara has prudently decided to disguise herself as a boy called "Oswaldo" by cutting her hair, wearing a cap and taping up her chest under her shapeless T-shirt. It creates a poignant romantic tension and there is even a tender sort of Jules et Jim frisson between the three of them. But to those hoping for a relaxing or romantic outcome, La Jaula de Oro has nothing to offer but grim reality. It is a very substantial movie, with great compassion and urgency.

Peter Bradshaw

New band of the day (The Family Rain No 1,518)

Paul Lester — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:06:52 GMT

They're bearded brothers from Bath who play blues-rock … meet the west country's answer to Kings of Leon

Hometown: Bath.

The lineup: Ollie Walter (guitar, vocals), William Walter (bass, vocals), Timothy Walter (drums, vocals).

The background: The Family Rain are three brothers who play "high-octane, hip-hop inspired, dirty blues-infused rock'n'roll". They're bearded and unkempt, so immediately you think of them as a west country Kings of Leon. They've been produced by Jim Abbiss, and so your mind wanders to other bands Abbiss has worked with, particularly Kasabian. They're operating vaguely in the realm of danceable rock'n'roll, and their music is rhythmical, but hip-hop it ain't. The idea, as far as we can glean, is that they should be fusing the metallic attack of AC/DC and the glowering G-Funk of Dr Dre because those, they explain, were the giants of their respective fields, and they grew up listening to them. Admittedly, that is a good idea. But to be honest they sound more like Maroon 5 with extra guitars.

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There would appear to be a gap between what the Family Rain envision, and what they're able to achieve. A reality gap, if you will. Apparently, they chose Abbiss because of his early engineering and mixing work on Massive Attack and DJ Shadow albums; they wanted some of trip hop's torpid, tense atmosphere to rub off on them. They even ditched early sessions at Rockfield studios in Wales because the results were too, well, rocky, and opted instead for Hansa, the legendary studios in Berlin where Bowie and Eno – and Bowie and Iggy – made their forward-looking masterpieces of proto-electronic pop, in the hope that some of their motorik mythos would seep under their skin.

It failed to do so on their first two singles. Carnival featured an upward-spiralling guitar line and a stuttering rhythm redolent of any number of indie bands dreaming of funk. The singer's near-yelp suggested a young man in the throes of sexual excitement, eager to communicate his breathless rapture to the multitudes. This is one of those bands who are going to have to become massive and play to huge crowds, otherwise they will make no sense at all. Trust Me … I'm a Genius has a similar jittery thrust. But it's not as though being in Germany has forced a radical shift in style, because their new single Pushing It is another showcase for staccato riffing and a bluesy rock grind as opposed to, say, Teutonic future disco. They've got other songs lined up such as You're the Best, which they compare to Elvis in Las Vegas with Phil Spector, and Don't Waste Your Time on Me, which sounds, they contend, "like a spaghetti western Massive Attack – it goes a bit trip hop and then comes in with this beat, with these horrible Sabbath chords." Bet it doesn't.

The buzz: "The future should be nothing short of incendiary for the Family Rain."

The truth: We felt a light drizzle.

Most likely to: Pour down vitriol on us.

Least likely to: Shower us with love.

What to buy: Pushing It is released by Mercury on 17 June.

File next to: Kings of Leon, Kasabian, Maroon 5, Chili Peppers.

Links: thefamilyrain.tumblr.com.

Friday's new band: The Orwells.

Paul Lester

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New band of the day (The Family Rain No 1,518)