Life Style

In the first episode of the Apple TV+ show The Studio, Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese sells his script to the fictional Continental Studios, only to be told later by a studio chief played by Seth Rogen that the project, about Jonestown, has been killed.Instead, the company is fast-tracking a soulless brand-based cash grab: a Kool-Aid movie.“Just give me back my movie and let me go sell it to f****** Apple, the way I should have done it in the first place,” a despairing Scorsese says.The line could practically be an ad for how Apple TV+, the tech giant’s streaming service, has positioned itself as a creative haven for filmmakers trying to sell bold, original ideas.But the question hanging over the company was, just how serious was it about its Hollywood ambitions? Would it be the ne...

When entering the United States through an airport or seaport, your electronic devices – laptops, phones, tablets – can be subject to search by Customs and Border Protection (CBP).A basic search involves an officer manually reviewing the device’s contents without using any external tools.An advanced search uses specialised equipment to access, copy and analyse the data on your device. This more invasive search requires reasonable suspicion of a law being broken or a national security threat, and must be approved by a senior Customs or Border Protection official.But border agents do not need a warrant to conduct either one of these searches.An electronic device subject to search is any “that may contain information in an electronic or digital form, such as computers, tablets, disks, drives,...

A highly sensitive test that detects traces of disease in the bone marrow of patients with a rare and aggressive type of blood cancer could help double their chances of survival, a new trial has found.The 10-minute procedure – which involves an injection in the hip bone every three months – identified signs of acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) returning in patients before it showed in blood tests.This gives doctors a “window of opportunity” to treat people while they are still well, researchers said.Experts hope the test could become routine care for patients with AML.AML is a cancer that causes the bone marrow to produce a large number of abnormal blood cells. Tens of thousands of people are diagnosed around the world each year.The risk of developing the disease increases with age and it is m...

San Francisco mayor Daniel Lurie had declared it Michael Tilson Thomas Day. City Hall glowed MTT’s trademark blue. Davies Symphony Hall, where Tilson Thomas presided over the San Francisco Symphony for an influential quarter century, was festooned with giant blue balloons.For Tilson Thomas, it all was the culmination of what he declared in February: “We all get to say the old show business expression, ‘It’s a wrap.’”Despite starting treatment for an aggressive form of brain cancer in summer 2021, Tilson Thomas astonishingly continued to conduct throughout the United States and even in Europe for the next three and a half years.But in February he learned that the tumour had returned, and the conductor declared April 26’s San Francisco Symphony gala, billed as an 80th birthday tribute to the...

Before Celine Song was an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, she was a playwright in New York who needed day jobs to pay the rent. That is how she found herself as a professional matchmaker.What may have begun as a purely transactional gig, a way for her to keep making her art in an expensive city, taught her more about people’s wants and needs and the true contents of their hearts than she could have ever imagined.“I always wanted to write something about it because there seemed to be a story in it that is massive and very epic in proportion,” Song said. “It affects every human being on Earth.”And while waiting for her breakout film Past Lives to debut, she did. That film is Materialists, a modern-day New York love story starring Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans that is heading to cin...

At the annual gathering of France’s finest chefs for the Michelin Guide awards this year, the talk was not only about whose restaurants had gained or lost a star.“Everyone’s discussing AI. I was at a table of 12 other chefs, and it was the main thing we talked about,” Matan Zaken, who runs the one-Michelin-star Nhome restaurant in Paris, said at the event at the end of March.The 32-year-old believes that some of his peers are reluctant to admit just how much they are already consulting services such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT to help them with recipes and ideas.“You’d be amazed to know how many people are using it. There are a lot of egos in the business. They’re not going to make a big thing about it,” he said.French-Israeli chef Matan Zaken at his restaurant Nhome in Paris. He embraces the use ...

The mother of a seven-year-old boy said “I feel like a millionaire, like I’ve won the lottery”, after a pioneering clinical trial transformed the life of her son, who has a severe form of epilepsy.Albie Kelly and Freddie Truelove, both seven, are two of the children who have been given a new lease on life following the research trial at Sheffield Children’s Hospital in the UK.Both boys have Dravet syndrome, a form of epilepsy which often begins before the age of one, and affects about one in every 15,000 babies born.Youngsters taking part in the trial have seen dramatic changes – moving from experiencing debilitating seizures to learning to speak, read, write independently, make new friends and take part in sport, the hospital said.A drug trial has transformed young Albie Kelly’s life, his...

Sylvia Chang Ai-chia is showing no signs of slowing down.The Taiwanese film icon is currently touring festivals with heartfelt drama Daughter’s Daughter, fine-tuning post-production on romance film Measure in Love and writing her next directing project, which she hopes to start filming in 2026.“I’ve been on the stage, working with young filmmakers, acting, helping people with scripts and writing my own things – which excites me, but it’s also very tiring,” the 71-year-old says.Sylvia Chang and Tian Zhuangzhuang in a still from Love Education (2017).A beloved entertainer since the 1970s, Chang became a pop singer soon after she finished school.“I thought I would continue as a singer,” she says. “But, once I started acting, I made a promise to myself that filmmaking would be my lifetime work...

The five members of Plave, one of K-pop’s trendiest groups, have appeared on television, held concerts, and one of their songs has even secured a place in the prestigious Billboard Global 200, an international music chart.On paper, they seem like any other K-pop sensation, except that they are two-dimensional avatars. Their songs and content have racked up over 470 million views on YouTube.The band, consisting of Yejun, Noah, Eunho, Bamby and Hamin, say they want to be globally recognised like K-pop sensation BTS.“We don’t often get to meet our fans, so when we meet them at a concert we get very excited,” said Bamby, who has pink hair and eyes. “They cheer for us together … we make an all-out effort when we perform.”Plave’s label, Vlast, says that, unlike many other virtual groups, the ava...

Hollywood reacted with scepticism to US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100 per cent tariffs on foreign films, with movie insiders calling it a policy made up on the fly by a president who fails to understand how the industry works.“It makes no sense,” entertainment lawyer Jonathan Handel said of Trump’s idea.Meanwhile, a British agent, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the specialist website Screen Daily: “It sounds potentially disastrous for the international film industry.”And the Canadian Media Producers Association said: “The proposed actions outlined in US President Donald Trump’s announcement will cause significant disruption and economic hardship to the media production sectors on both sides of the Canada-US border.” Hollywood films and major US television productio...