The SLMan Culture List: September

THE STREAMER: A Very Royal Scandal

Prime Video is gearing up to release its version of the doomed Prince Andrew Newsnight interview. A Very Royal Scandal, which lands on 19th September, features Michael Sheen (Good Omens, Prodigal Son Masters of Sex) as Prince Andrew and Ruth Wilson (Luther, The Affair, Jane Eyre) as Emily Maitlis. Based on the real-life 2019 interview between Maitlis and the prince over the scandalous accusations he faced regarding his involvement with Jeffrey Epstein and Virginia Giuffre, A Very Royal Scandal follows the pair through the lead-up to the interview, the ground-breaking event itself, and the many questions left in its wake that would change their lives forever.

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THE COFFEE-TABLE BOOK: LIFE. Hollywood

Cinephiles won’t be able to tear themselves away from Taschen’s latest. This weighty trip back in time to old Hollywood. features hundreds of meticulously researched images from the vast LIFE magazine archive. It claims to have captured “more stars than there are in heaven” via location shoots, Oscar nights, A-list homes and star-studded parties. With over 600 images from the magazine’s archives – well over half are previously unpublished – this hardback shows that LIFE had special access to celebrities such as Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, Clark Gable, Steve McQueen, Sophia Loren, Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Poitier, Paul Newman, Jane Fonda, Brigitte Bardot and more. Matching the splendour of a Hollywood epic, this two-volume blockbuster tells the intertwined story of a magazine and an art form that embodied the pinnacle of American imagination.

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THE NON-FICTION: The Future Was Now By Chris Nashawaty

In the summer of 1982, eight science fiction films were released within six weeks of one another. E.T., Tron, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Conan the Barbarian, Blade Runner, Poltergeist, The Thing and Mad Max: The Road Warrior changed the careers of some of Hollywood's now biggest names – while altering the art of filmmaking to this day. In The Future Was Now, Chris Nashawaty recounts the genesis of these films via an all-star cast of Hollywood luminaries: Steven Spielberg, at the height of his powers, conceives E.T. as an unlikely family tale, and quietly takes over the troubled production of Poltergeist, a horror film he’d been nurturing for years; Ridley Scott, fresh off the success of Alien, tries his hand at an odd Philip K. Dick story that becomes Blade Runner – a box office failure turned cult classic. Taken as a whole, these films show a precarious turning-point in Hollywood history, when baffled film execs finally began to understand the potential of high-concept films with a rabid fanbase, merchandising potential and endless possible sequels…

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THE EXHIBITION: Monet & London: Views Of The Thames

Claude Monet (1840-1926) is world renowned as a leading figure of French Impressionism, the movement that changed the course of modern art. Some of his most remarkable Impressionist paintings were made not in France but in London. They depict extraordinary views of the Thames as it had never been seen before, full of evocative atmosphere, mysterious light and radiant colour. Begun during three stays in the capital between 1899 and 1901, the series – depicting Charing Cross Bridge, Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament – was unveiled in Paris in 1904. Monet fervently wanted to show them in London the following year, but plans fell through. To this day, they have never been the subject of a UK exhibition. Monet & London: Views of the Thames will realise Monet’s unfulfilled ambition of showing this group of paintings in London, and just 300 metres from the Savoy hotel where many of them were painted.

Visit Courtauld.ac.uk

THE MUSEUM: Moco Museum

Moco Museum, which has outposts in Amsterdam and Barcelona, has opened the doors to its third location. In Marble Arch, it has brought together a permanent collection featuring some of the biggest names in modern and contemporary art: Andy Warhol, Damien Hirst, Daniel Arsham, Jean-Michel Basquiat, JR, Jeff Koons, KAWS, Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami and Yayoi Kusama. Standing alongside them are works by new and emerging talents from around the world, as well as pieces from London artists Jake Chapman, Hayden Kays and Tracey Emin. The museum has a basement gallery dedicated to immersive and sculptural art and, on 11th September, Moco will open its first temporary exhibition: Healing Frequency by Marina Abramović brings together 12 works from her ‘Transitory Objects for Human Use’ series.

Visit MocoMuseum.com

THE PLAY: Giant

In this new play, Nicholas Hytner directs Tony and Golden Globe winner John Lithgow in Giant, a powerful exploration of Roald Dahl’s antisemitism. Set in the summer of 1983, as Dahl faces backlash over an antisemitic article, Giant delves into the fraught hours leading to a pivotal decision – will he apologise or risk his legacy? With a stellar cast including Lithgow (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Crown), Rachael Stirling (Capital, Life) and Romola Garai (Atonement, One Day), Giant promises to be a darkly humorous and gripping exploration of reputation and redemption. The show begins on 20th September and runs until 20 November.

Visit RoyalCourtTheatre.com

THE CINEMA RELEASE: Megalopolis

On 27th September, the film Francis Ford Coppola has been trying to make for 40 years finally hits cinemas. From casting ‘cancelled’ actors to using fake critics quotes on the movie posters, it’s already been mired in scandal. Early reviews haven’t been overwhelmingly positive, but we still think this is one to see on the big screen. Starring Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Giancarlo Esposito and Jon Voight, the film focuses on the political conflict between Cesar (Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opponent Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests and partisan warfare.

Visit Picturehouses.com

THE STAR VEHICLE: Wolfs

Ocean’s 11 mega co-stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt have teamed up for this action-comedy. Available to stream on Apple TV+ at the end of the month, the film sees Clooney play a professional fixer hired to cover up a high-profile crime. But when a second fixer (Pitt) shows up and the two “lone wolves” are forced to work together, they find their night spiralling out of control in ways that neither one of them expected.

Visit TV.Apple.com

THE STYLE GUIDE: Denim: The Fabric That Built America

Defined over 70 years ago by hard-working people in their hard-working labours, denim has never gone out of style. Denim: The Fabric That Built America 1935-1944 is a portrait of this iconic cloth. The workwear overalls, jeans, jackets and shirts of Levi’s, Wrangler, Lee, OshKosh, Carhartt are all here in photographs taken from the archive of the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information. The archive holds over 170,000 images and some of the most recognisable photographs of the 20th century – but it has never been looked at through the prism of fashion history before. An extraordinary feat of curation, 250 images have been discovered in the depths of the archive to form this book, written and art-directed by denim historian and vintage-clothing expert Graham Marsh.

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THE FICTION: Playground By Richard Powers

Already longlisted for the Booker prize, Playground is a powerful new novel from the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Overstory and Bewilderment. Rafi and Todd are polar opposites at an elite high school where they bond over a 3,000-year-old board game. It sets them up for life: Rafi will get lost in literature, while Todd’s work will lead to a startling AI breakthrough. Elsewhere, Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs; Ina Aroita grows up in naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. All of these people meet on the history-scarred island of Makatea in French Polynesia, marked for humanity’s next great adventure: a plan to send floating, autonomous cities out into the open sea. Set in the world’s largest ocean, Playground explores that last wild place we have yet to colonise and interweaves profound themes of technology and the environment, and a deep exploration of our shared humanity.

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THE RETURN: Slow Horses

Oscar winner Gary Oldman is back for series four of Slow Horses, which is adapted from Spook Street, the fourth novel in author Mick Herron’s Slough House spy series. Beginning tonight with the first two episodes, followed by one new episode weekly, the darkly humorous spy drama continues to follow a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in a dumping ground department of MI5 known un-affectionately as Slough House. This season opens with a bombing that detonates personal secrets, rocking the already unstable foundations of Slough House. Hugo Weaving, Joanna Scanlan, Ruth Bradley, Tom Brooke and James Callis all join the cast.

Visit TV.Apple.com