Official guidance says ammonia in animal urine should be watered down to stop it corroding barkA neighbourhood in Vienna has introduced guidelines for dog walking, including the use of bottled tap water to rinse away urine and protect vulnerable trees.Neubau, an up-and-coming, densely populated district dotted with cafes and galleries, rolled out the Schönes Gassi (nice dog walk) campaign this week. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 13:50 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

You’re Paul McCartney. So how come you’re still getting het up at a fictional version of you being marginally smaller than a fictional version of John Lennon?There has been a lot of discourse and conjecture surrounding Sam Mendes’s forthcoming Beatles biopics. Some of this is logical (will people really turn out to see four near-identical films on the same day?), some creative (what animal did they have to shave to make John Lennon’s Abbey Road beard?). At every turn the film has been examined and factchecked and cross-referenced against testimonies from the band’s actual hairdresser.But until now the remaining Beatles have managed to keep fairly quiet about the whole thing. Last year Ringo Starr mentioned that he’d sat down with Mendes to rework a scene he wasn’t happy with, and Paul McCartney has praised the guitar playing of Paul Mescal, but it appeared that no real red lines had been crossed. Until now. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 13:30 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Keri Russell is still trying to stop a sea of berks who are one bad hair day away from starting a nuclear war – only this time, the cortisol levels and the sauciness have been ramped up even furtherThe Russian submarine is on the fritz and as such remains at the bottom of the North Sea. Its fancy nuclear missile, meanwhile, has been purloined by the Americans in an operation presumably entitled Let’s Flush Our Alliance With the Brits Down the Bog (and potentially instigate the third word war while we’re at it). The prime minister, Nicol Trowbridge (Rory Kinnear), remains oblivious and a berk. The Russians are similarly unaware of the theft, for now at least, but the US ambassador to the UK, Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), predicts the eventual discovery will blast the Kremlin’s ushankas skywards. “Russia will come to get their sub,” she warns her unblinking husband – and current US vice president – Hal (Rufus Sewell). “They will lose their shit when they find their apocalypse weapon is gone and they will attack the United Kingdom!” “Hmm,” replies Hal, who has, one suspects, shiftier fish to fry. “Mmm.”This is where we find ourselves as The Diplomat returns for a fourth series of exquisitely fraught geopolitical skulduggery. Which is to say; we’re stuffed. Poised on the precipice of Big War, a situation almost wholly attributable to the whims of the US president, Grace Penn (Allison Janney). Yikes. But also, in a very real sense, woohoo. Because there are few things as entertaining as The Diplomat in a bad mood, even if the stress induced by its doomsday theatrics requires much diaphragmatic breathing and the odd diplomatic sprint to the loo. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 07:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

In the third episode of the latest season, the boys head into Sephora and eventually the Backrooms in a story that makes fun of app-mutated self-careTrey Parker and Matt Stone have always been pretty upfront about how South Park, like all animated sitcoms from the past 35 years, lives in the shadow of The Simpsons. There are plenty of ways that The Simpsons, even in its more uneven recent seasons, still outshines South Park: greater depth of ensemble, stronger emotional moments, even in the sheer number of episodes.Something that South Park often does better, though, is react to contemporary social trends. Kyle, Stan, Cartman, Kenny and the rest are more or less the same age as Bart (and have been for decades); but The Simpsons has never been as adept at riffing on trends, tech and social issues as South Park, which has always been more immediate and responsive. Perhaps this is why it doesn’t feel like a betrayal to see the boys dealing with, say, looksmaxxing and aura farming, which is exactly what the third episode of South Park’s 29th season addresses.South Park is streaming on Paramount+ in the US, UK and Australia. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 05:36 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

The 1926 film of Goethe’s tragic tale of a man who sells his soul to the devil remains a spectacular feat of German expressionismThe centenary of FW Murnau’s silent fantasy-melodrama from 1926 is the occasion to ponder this mysterious film, taken from Goethe’s 19th-century depiction of the alchemist and natural philosopher who sells his soul to the devil but, in a very high-minded climax of German romanticism, is redeemed by love. (Not love of God precisely, but love of a good woman; the word “Liebe” finally appears at the centre of Murnau’s radiating vision of concentric circles conjured by the heavens, which annul his debt to the Evil One.) It is therefore very different from Christopher Marlowe’s scarier and more unforgiving account of Doctor Faustus.Murnau’s Faust is (obviously) concerned with and animated by evil, and there are echoes of his Nosferatu, made four years previously. In this film, Faust, having struck his bargain on a provisional 24-hour basis with Mephisto, finds that he is scared of a crucifix, like a vampire. It is also very much a film of Weimar Germany with its mad energy and streaks of garish satire and black comedy; the book-burning scene in which Faust immolates all his necromancy volumes, along with the Bible, is one which resonated with later events. (Perhaps it indirectly inspired Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto, later to be filmed by István Szabó.) Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 08:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Linda Cardellini tries her best but this baffling attempt to add backstory to one of horror’s thinnest franchises is IP stretching at its most pointlessThe unending exhaustion of IP has forced us to ask questions we never really wanted or needed to ask. How did the Pink Ladies in Grease come to be the Pink Ladies? What would happen if one of The Craft witches had a kid who was also a witch? Why is the yellow brick road the colour of yellow? What is Linda Blair up to these days?No one or no thing ever really dies any more, something that has long been true in the world of slashers, where no amount of stabbing, shooting and exploding has stopped masked killers from killing again and again and again. Recent years have seen the timeline of the Halloween franchise retooled so that Michael Myers could regain his head and restart his reign of terror, while Ghostface has resurfaced to stalk the younger relatives of his old frenemies. As Leatherface prepares an A24 comeback courtesy of Obsession’s Curry Barker and dual Nightmare on Elm Street reboots square off, it’s time to return to Camp Crystal Lake to see what desperate rights-holders can do with Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees, the hockey mask-wearing giant who enjoys slicing and dicing horny youngsters. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 07:01 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN

Bertrand Chamayou(Warner Classics)The pianist brings a singing quality and seeming effortlessness to the complete set of Songs Without WordsMendelssohn wrote 48 Songs Without Words for solo piano: eight sets of six, mostly under three minutes long, emerging over a 16-year period that spanned most of his short adult life. The handful that still regularly make their way on to recital programmes are only the tip of the iceberg; the complete set hasn’t been recorded as much as you might think, which makes this new release from Bertrand Chamayou still more welcome.These pieces belong to the world of Schubert Lieder, and Chamayou brings a singing quality to them from the off. The Duetto that rounds off the Op 38 set is beautifully done, the melodic lines alternating like a female and male voice, each lingering just slightly as the other voice takes over. Compared to other interpreters, Chamayou is often softer-edged, his playing a little smoother and more flowing, although there are exceptions: Op 62 No 6 – known as Spring Song, but originally titled Camberwell Green after the then-elegant London suburb where it was written – is given a perky, almost frothy touch in the accompaniment: spring bubbling under like frogspawn in a pond. Continue reading...

15 Oct 2026 14:00 ✍️ RSS THE GUARDIAN