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Meghan Markle has bared her soul and her bare face in her first ever podcast interview, appearing make-up free in a black sweatsuit and white trainers.“Meghan is opening up like never before, and shares real, raw and soul-filling stories, insights and inspiration. I’ve never cried so much in an interview, in the BEST possible way,” host Jamie Kern Lima teased about the latest episode of her podcast in an Instagram post.“And she and I decided to do the episode the same way we spend most of our time together – with no make-up on, in our sweats and cosied up in these two rocking chairs I have at my house. And today, we’re inviting YOU to join us in the rocking chairs!”In the interview, Meghan is visibly emotional while speaking about her husband, Prince Harry, and the public scrutiny she face...

When Bain, the vocalist of K-pop boy band Just B, came out as gay during a concert on April 22, it sparked a discussion in the broader K-pop scene about how such moments – still rare in the industry – may shape its future.The singer made the announcement during a stop on the group’s “Just Odd” world tour in Los Angeles, telling the crowd mid-show, “I am proud to be a part of the LGBTQ community.” His words were met with loud cheers and applause as he waved a rainbow flag onstage.Although several K-pop artists have come out as gay in recent years, Bain is the first active member of a Korean boy group to do so publicly.Korea’s entertainment industry has long been shaped by a conservative cultural backdrop, whereby open discussions of sexual orientation have remained limited.Queer representat...

The Vietnam war cast a long shadow across one of the most fertile periods of American filmmaking, and for the half-century since it ended, filmmakers have reckoned with its complicated legacy.These 10 films, assembled to mark the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, range from indelible anti-war classics to Vietnamese portraits of resistance, capturing the vastness of the war’s still-reverberating traumas.1. The Big Shave (1967)A 25-year-old Martin Scorsese made this six-minute short. In it, a man simply shaves himself before a sink and a mirror. After a few nicks and cuts, he does not stop, continuing until his face is a bloody mess – a neat but gruesome metaphor for Vietnam.Peter Bernuth in a still from The Big Shave (1967).2. The Little Girl of Hanoi (1974)A young g...

The great theatre composer Stephen Sondheim loved puzzles, and when he died in 2021, he left one for his good friend, British super-producer Cameron Mackintosh. He left him an unfinished show.The two men conceived of a revue of Sondheim’s songs during the pandemic and began listing tunes they wanted. But with the death of his friend, it was up to Mackintosh to make the show real.“I did say to him, ‘I really want to concentrate on the music’,” recalls Mackintosh. “I want it to be personal, but we never really got that far with the construction of it.”Sondheim died in November 2021. Soon afterwards, Mackintosh created the skeleton of what would be Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, which has landed on Broadway and stars Tony award-winners Bernadette Peters and Lea Salonga.The final rundown has ...

Independent French studio Sandfall Interactive’s first video game, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, only launched worldwide on April 24 but has already built up a solid community of fans eager to discover its post-apocalyptic fantasy world.According to Metacritic, which aggregates video game reviews, the turn-based role-playing game had a 92 out of 100 “universal acclaim” score based on critic reviews – the joint-highest so far this year.One of the studio’s three co-founders said the high numbers – rare for a game developed by an independent studio – were “extremely encouraging”.“We are coming to the end of four years of production and even longer for some of us,” Francois Meurisse said a few days before the game’s release. “We’re now at a crucial moment.”Sandfall Interactive’s 20 or so employ...

This article contains minor spoilers.Lead cast: Bona, Yook Sung-jae, Kim Ji-hoonLatest Nielsen rating: 9.2 per centIn The Haunted Palace, a period drama with shades of horror, comedy and romance, Bona (Twenty-Five Twenty-One) and Yook Sung-jae (The Golden Spoon) play a spectacles maker and a dragon in human form who find themselves within the walls of the royal palace, where they tackle a mystery.That sounds like a lot to take in, but the set-up is even more complicated than that, as we discover through the show’s opening episodes, which bring us up to speed on the many events that led the protagonists to that point.Yet it is to the show’s credit that it pulls off a heady mix of disparate genres and dense plotting with relative aplomb.

There are hair products out there for every style, from tight ringlets to bouncy bobs to sleek buzz cuts, under the sun.Once you know which products are right for your hair and desired look, they will save you time spent in front of the mirror and help you avoid a bad hair day.We have taken a look at some of the most common hair styling products and have asked stylists which ones are best for what type of hair and style.Before you start styling, you should shampoo, condition and treat your hair. Be wary of overdoing this if your goal is a voluminous hairstyle, as conditioner can weigh your hair down.Before you start styling, you should shampoo, condition and treat your hair. Photo: ShutterstockIf you want your hairstyle to last all day, you may want to use hair lacquer – a type of very str...

Actor and producer Ma Dong-seok, best known for his bone-crunching action in the The Roundup series, is set to captivate audiences once again, this time venturing into the occult with his latest film, Holy Night: Demon Hunters.In the movie Ma plays Bau, a formidable troubleshooter using his fists to exorcise demons as a leader of the “Holy Night” team.The 54-year-old actor, also known as Don Lee, expressed his enthusiasm for the project in a recent interview, highlighting the action sequences made possible by the film’s fantasy elements.“I put a lot of effort into the action sequences, and the fantasy genre allowed for a more impactful and refreshing result,” he said. He also shared his satisfaction in supporting the debut of director Lim Dae-hee.While working on the highly anticipated nex...

From the effects of tariffs to the benefits of sex therapy, here are five stories you may have missed over the weekend.

“The world is in a brilliant place right now,” Rattanamol Singh says sarcastically.“We live in deeply imperfect times,” he continues, more sombrely, “but what happens is that, underneath the surface, people from various disciplines are creating and talking to each other and finding ways to tell their stories through different mediums.”The search for such people took the Los Angeles-based filmmaker to Hong Kong recently, where he filmed a 40-minute “visual essay”.It will become the first episode of a documentary series called Patterns and Contrasts, which will be released on YouTube in early June.For Singh, who is of Punjabi-Sikh descent and grew up in the United States, the changes Hong Kong has seen since the 2019 anti-government protests and the introduction of the national security law ...