Life Style

3/5 starsThe Grim Reaper returns for Final Destination: Bloodlines, the sixth instalment in the popular horror franchise in which fate intervenes, accidents await and the innocent tend to be ripped apart.Fourteen years after the last film, this return feels welcome. It is certainly not aiming to reinvent the wheel, though. It sticks rigorously to the franchise formula of horrifying deaths, which usually result from the most benign situations.Still, there is something intoxicating about the carnage of Final Destination movies.This one starts with a flashback of sorts as 1950s mum-to-be Iris (Brec Bassinger) visits a restaurant at the top of a sky-high tower.No prizes for guessing that this gleaming new building is about to come crumbling down, sending dozens to their deaths. But this is a t...

Chinese-Indonesian rapper Rich Brian, English jazz singer and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier, Scottish indie band Franz Ferdinand, and Beth Gibbons, the vocalist of English alternative electronic band Portishead, are among the early line-up for this year’s Clockenflap.Early-bird tickets for the annual three-day international music and art event in Hong Kong, scheduled to take place at Central Harbourfront from December 5 to 7, went on sale at 3pm today.Born in Jakarta, 25-year-old Rich Brian – real name Brian Imanuel Soewarno – went viral on YouTube in 2016 with his debut single “Dat $tick”. He went on to sign with US-based record label 88rising, which promotes Asian and Asian-American artists.Rich Brian first went viral on YouTube in 2016. Photo: ClockenflapJacob Collier, on the othe...

A director of 37 films in 36 years, Steven Soderbergh is a Hollywood filmmaker who has long been ahead of the curve.Shifting effortlessly between studio movies (the Ocean’s trilogy, Magic Mike), art-house (Che, Kafka) and streaming (Kimi, No Sudden Move), he has also worked in TV (The Knick) and made web dramas (Command Z, Full Circle).Soderbergh has always had an uncanny ability to stay in tune with the industry: his 2005 film Bubble, which was released in cinemas, on cable and on DVD simultaneously, predicted the future for many films.As he returns to cinemas with spy thriller Black Bag, we count down his 10 best films to date.10. Black Bag (2025)Following tech-thriller Kimi (2022) and ghost story Presence (2024), Black Bag marks Soderbergh’s third – and most fruitful – film with screenw...

Lead cast: Kim Hye-ja, Son Suk-ku, Han Ji-min, Lee Jung-eunLatest Nielsen rating: 6.89 per centThere is an episode halfway through the series that brings us on a tour of hell and all its fire and brimstone, which is nothing like the world we live in. Yet for those who have been good during their mortal lives, the heaven that awaits them in this show must surely be a disappointment.The afterlife in Heavenly Ever After revolves around the Heaven Support Centre and its myriad rules and programmes. Not following these rules earns you a one-way ticket to hell. No matter how good you were to get into heaven, you need to be even better to stay there.

2/5 starsAnime compilation films are far from a new phenomenon. Since the 1970s, feature-length re-edits of animated television series have been a mainstay in Japanese cinemas.Offering diehard fans the opportunity of a big-screen refresher, while giving franchise newcomers a crash course that is all killer no filler, every self-respecting series from Space Battleship Yamato to Mobile Suit Gundam has swung for a splashy theatrical cash grab.Recently, Demon Slayer and Attack on Titan both scored notable box office hits with compilation films made up of almost entirely of previously-seen footage.Now comes Kaiju No. 8: Mission Recon, 80 minutes of distilled footage from the first season of the science-fiction coming-of-age series adapted from Naoya Matsumoto’s digital manga of 2020.In addition...

Luxury fashion labels are increasingly reaching beyond the red carpets and exclusive parties of the cinema world, becoming partners with filmmakers and production companies.At the Cannes Film Festival this year, which starts on May 13, labels will be looking to showcase not only their outfits, but also their credibility as investors.Alongside corporate heavyweights such as Chanel and Dior, trendy Paris-based label AMI and its founder, Alexandre Mattiussi, have linked up with the festival for the first time.AMI is set to present a new award for emerging talent – the Grand Prix AMI Paris – at the secondary Critics’ Week section of the festival.“We’re going there humbly, in support of cinema and its actors, to accompany artists,” said Mattiussi, 44, who serves as creative director of his bran...

Russia’s Borodin Quartet returns to Hong Kong this week with a programme that marks the chamber music ensemble’s 80th anniversary.Comprising two violinists, a violist and a cellist, the quartet remains an authoritative interpreter of Dmitri Shostakovich’s music.On May 16 the ensemble will perform the Russian composer’s String Quartet No 1 in C major, Op 49, and on May 17, his Piano Quintet in G minor, Op 57, with Russian pianist Andrey Pisarev.Yao Jue, who invited the Borodin Quartet to perform in Hong Kong, says its programmes will showcase the ensemble’s style and inspire Hong Kong audiences. Photo: Hong Kong String OrchestraHKSO founder and artistic director Yao Jue asked the quartet to tailor its Hong Kong programme to showcase its playing style. “[They] are well-known pieces, but not ...

Out west, they groove with fast, evenly spaced beats. In the east, it is more free-form and fluid.Like humans, chimpanzees drum with distinct rhythms – and two subspecies living on opposite sides of Africa have their own signature styles, according to a study published in the scientific journal Current Biology.The idea that ape drumming might hold clues to the origins of human musicality has long fascinated scientists, but collecting enough clean data amid the cacophony of the jungle had, until now, proven elusive.“Finally we’ve been able to quantify that chimps drum rhythmically – they don’t just randomly drum,” said the study’s lead author, Vesta Eleuteri, of the University of Vienna in Austria.The findings lend fresh weight to the theory that the raw ingredients of human music were pres...

Thousands of cultural treasures from Germany’s former Hohenzollern imperial family will remain on permanent display in museums in Berlin and Brandenburg, the country’s new minister of state for culture, Wolfram Weimer, has announced..After a dispute lasting almost 100 years, the descendants of the last German emperor have reached a landmark agreement with the federal government and with the states of Berlin and Brandenburg, he said.“This agreement is a tremendous success for Germany as a cultural location and for the art-loving public,” Weimer said in Berlin.“For a hundred years, there has been ongoing uncertainty about objects that are central to the art and collection history of Prussia and thus to German history as a whole.”German Minister of State for Culture Wolfram Weimer. Photo: dpa...

One way to get around and familiarise yourself with a new city when travelling is to explore it on foot. If you are a runner, you get to cover more ground.Fitting a long-distance run into a tight travel itinerary, however, can be a challenge – as is finding a place to shower and wash your clothes afterwards if your excursion takes you far from your hotel.“I love to go for runs when I travel, but it’s difficult to always pack my running gear in my luggage,” says Tom Feng, a 34-year-old Hongkonger who has been running as a hobby for years.“I usually only get to run near my hotel, so it feels quite limited, even though I always try to book hotels near popular local running spots.”In Japan, there is a unique, and cultural, solution to this problem: “sento running”.Sento are traditional public ...