
The Wild Robot to Deaf President Now! The seven best films to watch on TV this week
Friday 23 May, 9.10am, 6.10pm, Sky Cinema Premiere
Set during one week in 1988, Davis Guggenheim and Nyle DiMarco's revelatory documentary follows an era-defining protest at Gallaudet University in Washington DC – at the time the only deaf higher education institution in the world. When the students discovered a hearing person had been chosen as their new president over deaf candidates, they locked down the campus until the decision was changed. The activists interviewed impress with their zeal for self-determination in a film cleverly designed so that hearing audiences are immersed in a deaf world.
Out now, Apple TV+
Andrea Arnold brings earthy conviction to her 2011 adaptation of Emily Brontë's smouldering classic. This is the first version that makes overt the latent suggestion that Heathcliff is African Caribbean, emphasising the transgressive (for the times) nature of his love for Catherine. It's a heavy, passionate, at times brutal rendering of the wild moorland romance – almost an anti-costume drama. Shannon Beer and Kaya Scodelario are convincing as the young and grownup Cathy, while Solomon Glave and James Howson share the crucial role of the tempestuous Heathcliff.
Sunday 18 May, 12.55am, Film4
As ever when that wrecking ball of creative energy, Spike Lee, goes historical, the present-day resonances are clear and central. His biopic of political activist Malcolm X (a charismatic Denzel Washington) starts with footage of the beating of Rodney King and ends with a cameo from Nelson Mandela, but there's plenty in the personal experience of the robber turned Black nationalist leader to excite interest and anger. A story of idealism nurtured then thwarted, whether you agree with Malcolm's views or not it's a fitting tribute to a major figure in US history.
Monday 19 May, 11pm, BBC Two
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Interspersed with words taken from her own unpublished memoir and a trove of home movie footage, Alexis Bloom and Svetlana Zill's candid documentary gets as close to the 'bohemian rock chick' Anita Pallenberg as we're probably going to get. She blazed a trail from impoverished Italian aristocracy to feted New York model to lover of three Rolling Stones, retaining her independent spirit through fame, hard drugs and motherhood, mesmerising everyone she met.
Tuesday 20 May, 10pm, Sky Arts
The Who's bombastic rock opera album gets the bombastic celluloid treatment it deserves courtesy of – who else? – British cinema's wild man Ken Russell. Singer Roger Daltrey plays Tommy, a boy who loses his sight, hearing and speech after witnessing his mother's adultery. But the traumatised kid shows a talent for pinball that inspires a messianic movement. The film has dated badly in places, but for sheer chutzpah and verve there's little that compares to it – from Tina Turner's devilish Acid Queen to Elton John and his sky-high boots as the Pinball Wizard.
Wednesday 21 May, 7.55am, Sky Cinema Greats
After getting sacked from his supermarket job, young LA punk Otto (Emilio Estevez) finds himself working with Harry Dean Stanton's repo man – a low-rent operator who repossesses cars from those in debt. However, one car on their list, a Chevy Malibu, has something glowing and deadly in the boot … Writer-director Alex Cox pays homage to Kiss Me Deadly's MacGuffin in his TexMex road movie cum sci-fi thriller, but adds a scuzzy edge all his own as the protagonists tour a run-down city rife with drugs and crime.
Thursday 22 May, 12.35am, Sky Cinema Greats
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The Independent
14 minutes ago
- The Independent
Alcohol use has increased among women — and so have cases of liver disease
Alcohol-related liver disease has more than doubled in the U.S. over the last 20 years. The increase is tied to four groups that make up a greater share of heavy drinkers than they did two decades ago: Women, adults ages 45 and older, people living in poverty, and those with metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome refers to a number of conditions, including high blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol, that increase the risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. Exactly why these groups are drinking more remains unclear. Vanderbilt University School of Medicine's Dr. Peter Martin previously told NBC News that 'it's become more and more socially acceptable for women to drink as much as men' and George Koob, director of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told The New York Times that he believed older Americans are even less 'likely' to understand the hazards of alcohol. 'Alcohol-related liver disease is the main cause of liver-related death and these results are a major wakeup call to the dangers of drinking,' researcher Dr. Brian Lee, a hepatologist and liver transplant specialist at Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California, said in a statement after the new study published Wednesday. The findings, Lee said, provide the first comprehensive look at the demographics of heavy drinking and their relation to liver disease since the 1990s. Because the average drinking rate in the U.S. was unchanged over the last 20 years - outside of the pandemic - it suggested factors such as changing health and demographics may be playing a role. The researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of adults and children in the U.S. from 1999 through 2020. They tracked the total increase in significant liver disease, a point when scar tissue impairs the organ's function, often caused by heavy drinking. More than 51,600 adults died from liver disease in 2020 in the U.S. The researchers looked at the demographic and health profiles of adults, age 20 or older, who drank heavily - eight drinks per week for women and 15 for men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previous research had tied the four groups looked at in this study to a higher risk of liver disease when exposed to alcohol. A separate 2024 study, authored by Lee, found that heavy drinking rose at the pandemic's peak and continued for two years after that. Lee hypothesized that increase may have been due to stress. Liver disease deaths have also roughly doubled over the last 20 years, and the number of annual alcohol deaths due to cancer has doubled in the same time period. Lee believes the results will help to provide doctors with necessary updates to better treat patients and potentially result in more screenings and interventions for Americans in high-risk populations. 'Our results show that the makeup of the American public with heavy alcohol consumption has changed compared to 20 years ago,' he said.


The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘This is not AI': why oiled-up abs are the least radical thing about Sacha Baron Cohen's reinvention
It is a rite of passage for almost every comic actor working today. You spend years – sometimes even decades – curating a reputation as a happy go lucky, physically anonymous everyman. Then Marvel comes knocking, and you realise that you might have to share a scene with Chris Hemsworth, and next to him you're going to look like a weedy twig-worm hybrid. The next thing you know, you're all over the internet, greased up and flexing. Which is a very long way of saying: Borat's got abs now. Sacha Baron Cohen is this month's Men's Fitness magazine cover model. His pecs are popping. His biceps are bulging. His forearms look like a sack of live snakes. His pants are, conservatively, two and half inches lower than they really should be. His entire torso looks like it's been rolled around in margarine. He is, to use his own words, 'hard launching my mid-life crisis'. And this is all because of Marvel. Sacha Baron Cohen stars in the Disney+ TV show Ironheart as Mephisto. Which might be news to a lot of you, since Ironheart was released right at the moment that superhero fatigue hit such terminal velocity that president of Marvel Studios Kevin Feige essentially chose to promote the Fantastic Four movie by promising everyone that he wasn't going to make as many TV shows any more. But, really, that's beside the point. Because, of all the shredded topless comic actor torso reveals, the only one to go on to any substantial screen time was Chris Pratt. It has now been 12 years since he took his top off for Instagram to show his transformation from 'the schlubby one from Parks and Recreation' to 'man with abdominal muscles', and he has since been in six MCU films, a Christmas special and several other projects that relied on him looking ripped. Contrast that with Kumail Nanjiani, who went from a round-faced, Oscar-nominated writer in 2017 to looking like a vacuum-sealed walnut bag in 2019. And this because he had been cast in The Eternals, in which he effectively had a bit part as one of about 300 new superheroes. Aside from a voice acting gig in one episode of What If…?, that has been the sum total of his MCU output. Which is still a ton compared to Sacha Baron Cohen, whose Mephisto appeared fully clothed in just one episode of a television show that has left no cultural footprint whatsoever. The point is that, while a Marvel gig might ostensibly be the impetus to start pumping iron, it isn't necessarily the end goal. For all anyone knows, we may never see Mephisto again. But the image of Cohen clutching a pair of dumbbells while being covered in more goose fat than a cross-channel swimmer will live for ever. Especially since his earlier career relied upon him showing off as much of his body as he could. Go back and look at photos of him in a mankini as Borat, and you'll see what a change this is. That said, despite being leaner and better defined now, those pictures demonstrate that the most effective element in his transformation may well have been a comprehensive chest wax. Still, let's allow him this moment. If nothing else, Cohen is being neatly self-deprecating about how he looks on Instagram, quipping: 'Some celebs use Ozempic and some use private chefs, others use personal trainers. I did all three,' and 'This is not AI. I really am egotistical enough to do this.' And if it means that he's moving away from comedy – there's no way that Borat can ever wear another mankini unless he's going to aggressively rebrand himself as a thirsty divorcee – then so be it. Between Ironheart and last year's Disclosure, it seems like that's where he was headed anyway. Besides, this reveal puts Sacha Baron Cohen one step closer to the next chapter in the MCU playbook: complaining about how horrible it is to look like this. Chris Pratt did it, claiming that he had to drink so much water that his life became a 'nightmare'. Kumail Nanjiani did it, making a colossal show of getting to eat some cake like a normal person. And so it will inevitably be with Sacha Baron Cohen. That is, unless Mephisto becomes a central part of the MCU in the future. If that's the case, the brand sponsorship with Veet must be just around the corner.


Daily Mail
15 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Teddi Mellencamp shows fans what she looks like with no wig on as she gives grim update on cancer battle
Teddi Mellencamp unveiled her latest look on Wednesday amid her brutal battle with cancer. But her break to reveal her stylish new look came shortly after she revealed on her podcast that a treatment she has been relying on to fight her cancer has been making her 'sicker.' The 44-year-old former Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star — who had a chilling burglary scare earlier this week — had previously disguised her treatment-related hair loss with a variety of wigs, and she even rocked an edgy close-cropped buzz cut that revealed her scars and bald patches from chemotherapy and brain surgery. For her latest hairdo, Teddi revealed a freshly styled but thicker version of her buzz cut, this time dyed a chic platinum blond. She sounded hesitant at the reveal, writing, 'Let's see how long this lasts.' The reality star, who also credited her hair stylist, shared on Wednesday's episode of her podcast Two Ts In A Pod that her current immunotherapy treatments have begun to make her feel worse than before she started them. 'Essentially, what we figured out with me was, yes, I started out feeling great, and I could do all the pods and I could do all these things, and I could go to all my daughter's horse shows and I could stay at my house by myself, and I felt really strong,' she said while chatting with her co-host Tamra Judge. 'And what's happening with me is the longer that I'm on immunotherapy, the sicker it's making me.' Teddi said she had been consulting with her doctors on how to proceed, and they had decided to temporarily halt the immunotherapy treatments because they had been wracking her body 'incredibly hard.' 'We're going to take a little break on the immunotherapy to get my body back feeling stronger,' Teddi declared. She clarified that she was currently taking steroids to help alleviate the side effects of the immunotherapy. 'We're doing everything that we can to get me back to feeling like I, you know, I can do this, I can do all the things,' Teddi added. She said that she had lately been dealing with highly variable energy levels, where some days she could do all her usual tasks, while other days she struggled to fulfill her responsibilities without getting too fatigued. Teddi also noted that she has had difficulties with her memory and sometimes struggled to recall gossip from earlier RHOBH episodes when recording her podcast. She even rocked an edgy close-cropped buzz cut that revealed her scars and bald patches from chemotherapy and brain surgery However, it wasn't clear if those memory side effects were due to her latest round of treatments, or if they could have stemmed from her brain tumors. The daughter of John Mellencamp previously revealed that she had been diagnosed with several melanomas in 2022, and the surgeries to remove them in recent years have left a patchwork of scars across her back and shoulders. In February, she revealed that her skin cancer had metastasized and spread to her brain, with the resulting tumors causing devastating headaches that had grown in intensity in the weeks leading up to their discovery. She shared with her fans in April of this year that her melanomas were now considered stage IV after metastasizing and spreading to her lungs and brain. Patients diagnosed with stage IV cancer also have a greater likelihood of dying from the disease, though it can still be reversed at that point, or at least treated well enough to prolong a patient's life for a considerable amount of time. Teddi has subsequently called out commenters on her Instagram posts who have suggested she has little time left. During her somber health update, she clarified that she doesn't want to fill her fans' 'feed with cancer' news. 'I know that can be a depressing topic,' she admitted. 'But I also want [people to know that] if you're going through something like this, things are going to change and that's OK,' Teddi said. 'The hardest thing for me has been kind of the wake up call of "Wow, I can't do what I did yesterday," or "Wow, I can't do what I did three weeks ago,"' she added. Teddi also reiterated that her cancer hasn't just upended her life, but has also severely affected her children. 'It's changed my kids' life. It's changed my relationship with Edwin [Arroyave],' she said, referring to her estranged husband. 'You guys all know that we were filing for divorce. Nothing's changed in that other than that we're on hold because of what's happening to me medically,' she explained. 'But he's had to step in and help me because some days I can't do it.' Teddi and Edwin share three children: daughters Slate, 12, and Dove, four, as well as their 10-year-old son Cruz. The former Real Housewife is all the stepmother of Edwin's oldest daughter, 16-year-old Isabella. In a recent interview with her friend and former RHOBH costar Kyle Richards, Teddi revealed that her doctors opted not to order more advanced scans after initially discovering her stage I melanomas, which might have revealed that her cancer was spreading. She urged others diagnosed with cancer to advocate for themselves and to be more actively involved in their treatment as a result.