Category: 5. Entertainment

Filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho is known for directing some of South Korea’s biggest commercial hits of screens large and small, such as the zombie blockbuster Train to Busan (a $140 million box-office smash), or breakthrough Netflix series like Hellbound and Parasyte: The Grey. But the director’s most recent feature, The Ugly, was made for a mere $160,000.

A miraculous feat of independent filmmaking amid Korea’s increasingly hyper-commercialized entertainment sector, the period thriller nonetheless has all of the gloss and production prowess of a midbudget studio feature. Yeon fully self-financed the film, which he also wrote, through his production outfit Wow Point, ensuring total creative control. He paid his small but distinguished cast — including stars and industry veterans Park Jeong-min (Uprising), Kwon Hae-hyo (Peninsula) and Shin Hyun-been (Revelations) — a modest day rate, while promising them a share of backend profits. Similar arrangements were made with the skeleton crew and award-winning department heads. Leading local studio Plus M Entertainment later boarded as distributor and international sales agent. Financial details remain undisclosed, but international presales moved briskly at film markets over the past year, suggesting Yeon and his collaborators have likely already made a tidy return.

The Ugly will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 9, followed by commercial releases in South Korea on Sept. 11 and the U.S. on Sept. 26.

Korean media outlets have hailed The Ugly’s production approach as a potential creative solution to the skyrocketing actor fees and production costs that have plagued the local film industry in recent years, as swelling K-content slates at Netflix and Disney+ continue to drive up the cost of talent. Yeon has similarly urged fellow Korean creatives to experiment with financing and production structures.

A haunting thriller that weaves mystery with social critique, The Ugly follows Im Dong-hwan, a man who learns that the remains of his mother, Jung Young-hee — who vanished 40 years earlier — have been unearthed in a forest. Teaming with a TV journalist, he investigates her past as a garment factory worker in 1970s Seoul, only to find that her former colleagues recall her merely as an especially “ugly” woman they would rather forget. Dong-hwan also begins to suspect that his father, Yeong-gyu — a blind man who overcame his disability to raise him and become a master artisan — may be guarding secrets of his own. What begins as a family mystery gradually opens onto broader questions of social resentment, morality and the enduring trauma of history.

Ahead of this year’s Busan International Film Festival — where Plus M will be selling The Ugly at the Asian Contents & Film Market, and Showbox will be selling Yeon’s upcoming zombie thriller Colony — The Hollywood Reporter connected with Yeon via Zoom in Seoul to discuss the layered meanings of The Ugly and the bold microbudget experiment that brought it to life.

(Warning: Spoilers for The Ugly follow.)

I understand The Ugly is a project you’ve been working on and thinking about for a very long time. How did it begin?

I wrote the script around the time when I did The Fake (2013). I wanted to tell a story about generational differences. My father’s generation in Korea was focused so heavily on achievement and economic development. My generation came after that and everything was changed for us. The main character [in The Ugly], Im Yeong-gyoo, overcomes obstacles in a very dramatic way, and he’s almost a symbol for Korea’s modern development. As a counterpoint, I created the character Jung Young-hee to explore who and what was erased during this period of miraculous growth.

The camera avoids showing Young-hee’s face throughout the entire film until the very last shot, where you reveal a photo of her. But the face we see isn’t the actress TKTK who plays her. How did you come up with that image you use to represent her? I found it almost heartbreaking in its frank ordinariness.

I wanted a face that could be anybody’s but also nobody’s, representing that entire generation of Korean society. The final reveal is almost documentary-like, and I wanted it to extend the film’s world into our reality. Everyone will be naturally curious about just how “ugly” she is, but the experience of ugliness is a very subjective thing. Most importantly, she is a deeply just character, and her relentless sense of justice makes those around her very uncomfortable. I wanted to pose the question: Is it really her face that’s ugly, or the corruption of those who scorn her? To me, she symbolizes a kind of “discomforting justice.”

Moral complexity is a hallmark of your work. How do you approach shaping the audience’s sympathies to create this multilayered aspect?

When I start imagining the world of a film, I approach it in a Socratic way, where I look for two opposing egos that can clash and question one another in an endless loop with no decisive answer. Finding themes where characters can continuously engage and undermine one another in this way, as a kind of contrasting ideal, is the most gratifying thing to me as a creator. My criteria for a great film is one that begins as soon as it finishes, because it starts a line of questioning in the audience’s mind that can’t be easily resolved.

Okay, here’s an overlong reading of the story’s allegory: The blind stamp carver, Im Yeong-gyoo, represents Korea in its rapid development era, as you said, after the country has suffered historical hardships and humiliations on the world stage. Like the blind father, the country is desperately trying to overcome its past and disadvantages, in pursuit of a more beautiful future — but that pursuit almost necessarily entails a brittle form of pride, which leads to various injustices along the way. Young-hee, meanwhile, represents pure moral conscience, which is unwelcome during the intensity of this competitive, fast-developing era. She stands for the vulnerable who are cast aside, erased from the narrative of the country’s self-overcoming. But the scars from that era are still very much present in society, and the son, Im Dong-hwan, represents the youth of today who are trying to come to terms with that generational complexity and its legacy. His father has largely been a good dad and he’s proud of him, but he’s also coming to terms with the truly terrible acts that were entailed in his father’s overcoming. Am I on the right track?

On the whole, that’s very close to my intention. I’ll point out a couple of other details that are important to grasping the code that’s embedded in the film. One is the character of the factory owner, Baek Ju-sang, who has a very dark, hidden side to him, but who is also considered a good boss and decent person by the people around him. In that time of incredible economic hardship, he was one of the rare few who never skipped paying his employees and kept the factory humming for everyone’s gain. The second detail is the cut that Young-hee leaves on her husband’s hand in the moment that he kills her. In the beginning of the film, Yeong-gyoo explains it away as an injury he got while perfecting his stamp carving artistry. The way he twists the story of this scar — which cannot be erased — is key to what I wanted to express.

You mentioned the project began with thinking about your father’s generation. Have you shown the film to your parents?

Not yet. My father isn’t well enough to watch my films, sadly, but I think my mother, who is from that same generation, will see it. I’m really curious to see what she’ll think.

Since the film is an allegory about South Korea, did it shift your thoughts about your country in any meaningful way?

Not really. I tweaked and smoothed a lot of things to make for a better film, but my core view and the central theme were all there in the original script. Something that did change was my view of the Korean film industry. Thanks to incredible works like Parasite and Squid Game, Korean content has made huge achievements on the world stage. But at the same time, I’ve begun to feel that the artistic quality and value of our films has started to be defined by their ranking on streaming platforms. It’s become all about quantitative appeal for global audiences. Ironically, this unspoken industry atmosphere reflects the same desperate growth-oriented era that The Ugly is all about. So I thought deeply about how I could evade that logic as I put The Ugly together. This was an incredible motivation for me with this movie.

I’ve read about the film’s very low budget, small creative team and the tight shooting schedule. You also were able to recruit high-profile actors who were willing to forgo up-front payment for potential backend. Why did you set the film up this way?

Two reasons. First, my daughter, like many young people, watches a lot of YouTube — it’s almost the only thing she watches. So I end up watching a lot of YouTube content with her, and this made me start to question the way I make films. Because when you think about it, the online content that is really competing with film for attention is often incredibly compelling and entertaining in its own right, and it requires very little up-front budget to create. As a film buff, I also realized that a lot of the films I most love — by legendary Asian masters like Edward Yang, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and others — were made for very little money. So, these two factors in combination got me thinking that I should try doing something on a much smaller budget.

Do you feel the experiment was successful for you — both artistically and as a business model?

The cast and crew were all people I’ve been working with for a very long time. There was no external funding, so the creation of this film was essentially a group of friends clustered around the script, having intense artistic conversations, and nothing else existed outside that circle. So I just hope the end result — both commercially and creatively — is as satisfying for everyone as the process of making it.

Would you work this way again?

Absolutely. Most of my work will still be within the larger Korean system, but I definitely want to continue making smaller films like this. I hope investors and distributors become more open to supporting such projects, and I urge other artists explore new approaches, too. Different mediums — digital versus theatrical — have different speeds of delivering story and information. YouTube and streaming need to be fast and instantly stimulating, while film is slower and more immersive. The Ugly, for example, is a drama thriller that’s not really about finding the culprit behind the murder — it’s pretty obvious from the start. It’s about slowly exploring the twisted inner lives of these characters and what they represent — and that requires a theatrical experience. I don’t think cinema is dying — but we need to be open to transformation. I look forward to seeing what emerges.

To watch BBC One’s new reality series Stranded on Honeymoon Island is to be hit with a barrage of questions. To be fair, the main question is, “Weird, I thought I was watching BBC One, but this is clearly an ITV2 show. Does this mean my television is broken?” However, the more pressing one is probably, “Where’s Davina?”

To look on iPlayer, Stranded on Honeymoon Island – in which a bunch of strangers get married to each other and are then shipped off to a remote island with only each other for company – is absolutely a Davina McCall show. There are five figures on the show’s thumbnail, but four of them are pushed back into the middle distance, while McCall looms heavily in the foreground, towering over everyone else like a preternaturally delighted Godzilla. And that would be fine … were McCall actually part of Stranded on Honeymoon Island.

Reader, she is not. Aside from her voiceover – which, for the overwhelming majority of the production process, would have been performed by a researcher – actual flesh and blood McCall is nowhere to be seen. Her physical involvement in the first episode starts two minutes in and ends five minutes in. That’s it. In the next two episodes, she pops up to make highly sporadic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearances on the contestants’ iPads, reading scripted remarks from thousands of miles away. It is, you have to assume, the cushiest job in all of television.

Or at least it would be, were it not for Elizabeth Hurley’s presence on Channel 4’s The Inheritance. Hurley is nominally the host of this vaguely Traitorseque gameshow, but – and this must be the reason why she agreed to turn up – she is dead. Despite being the main draw of the show, her role involves appearing in exceptionally brief videos in fancy dresses while sitting on an array of suffocatingly plush sofas, and literally not a single thing more than that.

What’s going on? Is remote hosting a thing now? Even a couple of years ago, the expectation would have been that McCall would have flown out to the honeymoon islands and delivered pieces to camera, or at least interacted with the contestants for a bit. And, even if Hurley were still playing a dead person, there would have been a stipulation that, at the very least, she would have to lie motionless on the floor with an axe through her head or whatever.

But why bother with all that when you could just book the pair of them for three hours and get them to film brief little clips on a phone? Do McCall and Hurley even know they were involved in these programmes? So far, it does feel like someone tricked them into making a bunch of Cameo videos and tried passing it off as legitimate work.

To make matters worse, Stranded on Honeymoon Island and The Inheritance seem to understand that this is suboptimal. Compare them to The Traitors, where – even if she isn’t there the whole time – Claudia Winkleman sets the tone of the entire show with her presence. The series as a whole is off-kilter and melodramatic, and Winkleman’s devotion to leaning into this mood lifts it immeasurably. Imagine if, during the Round Tables, she was reduced to making a series of preprepared statements via an iPad on a stick. It would be terrible.

Without this, production on both shows is reduced to shore up the hosts’ meagre screentime with ungainly reaction shots from the contestants. After McCall wafts out of the room five minutes and 42 seconds into the first episode of Stranded on Honeymoon Island, one of them calls out “Love you!” after her. Similarly, Hurley’s first appearance is bookended by someone cooing, “God, she looks good.” You have to assume that nobody has ever said that to Stephen Mulhern when he’s in the room hosting Deal or No Deal.

If this is a trend, it’s hard to know where it began. You have to wonder if Love Island – where Maya Jama presents, despite having minimal involvement – has set a tone that the rest of television has chosen to follow. Or maybe it’s The Apprentice, where Alan Sugar would sometimes introduce tasks with distracted remote videos rather than a physical appearance. You could even argue that this is simply McCall coming home, since her job as the host of Big Brother 15 years ago essentially required her to sit out the bulk of the show and only turn up for evictions.

Perhaps, however, the origins of this are even older. Readers of a certain vintage might remember the 1991 boardgame Atmosfear, in which the direction of the game was influenced by a figure who barked orders from the accompanying VHS tape, regardless of what was actually being played. Essentially, Elizabeth Hurley on The Inheritance is the 21st-century equivalent of Atmosfear. This isn’t something that any of us should be proud of.

I was going to write about how riding a bike seems to stimulate my brain. It’s like going to a well for ideas. And the radio, I love the radio, particularly Talk Radio. I listen to it in all the in-between moments of my day. I think it’s the best way to get out of the bubble.  

But the truth is, and at risk of sounding like a plonker, the single biggest source of inspiration for me is talking to people. When I think about where my ideas have come from, or whenever I’ve got stuck, chatting to people has always helped. Every conversation holds an insight, something you should look up, a window to outside our adland bubble. I think this is why I’ve always preferred being a creative director to a creative. It’s a people job. A large chunk of your day is spent talking through embryonic thoughts, swapping references, and figuring things out. I get a lot of creative energy from this.

Here are three people I’ve had inspiring chats with:

Paula Laren is a trained accountant and business controller for a Swedish industrial company.

Her work is about as far as you can possibly get from advertising, which provides me with a healthy perspective. Think of compressors more than 360 campaigns. She was born in Peru but moved to Sweden as a teenager, which makes her an unusual mix of South American and Scandinavian. Over the years, I haven’t just gotten to know Paula, I got to know two completely different cultures too. From ceviche to rollmops, Pisco Sour to schnapps, Mario Vargas Llosa to Astrid Lindgren, Maná to ABBA, if I hadn’t shimmied up to Paula in a dodgy nightclub in Nottingham, I wouldn’t have experienced any of this.

Meditation and spiritual connection may be OK in small doses, but after three floors and 30,000 sq metres of darkened rooms, theatrical installations, altars and votive sculpture, more sound work than I’ve ever encountered in a single show, and a general encouragement to be moved, mesmerised and in touch with my spiritual side, my ears are ringing and I feel quite on edge.

The São Paulo biennale, the second oldest art exhibition of its type in the world, takes the title Not All Travellers Walk Roads for its 36th edition, a line, which, with some irony, is from Of Calm and Silence, a poem by the Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo. In Cameroonian curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung’s show of 120 artists, this translates as imagining alternative forms of consciousness, invariably looking to nature and non-western belief systems.

The sound of birdsong greets you as you walk into the exhibition pavilion from São Paulo’s Ibirapuera Park. There are birds outside, but this is the recorded soundtrack to a garden planted in the gallery by US-Nigerian artist Precious Okoyomon. It features fresh earth, boulders and a tranquil pool, a mass of moss and trees that bow in the Brazilian heat coming through the pavilion glass. Later in the show, a botanist interviewed for a video installation by Theo Eshetu – all extreme closeups of plants, flowers mirrored and botanical footage shot in kaleidoscope – explains about plant “consciousness”, and how consciousness may not always be linked to the brain and could be experienced through other means. In this artificial garden we are encouraged to convene with nature.

The tweeting and chirrupping has competition though: a sound system has been set up by Gê Viana, the speakers interspersed with the artist’s collages of forest fauna and old reggae maranhense parties. The subgenre of reggae that flourished in the Brazilian state of Maranhão, melodic and perhaps a bit sexier, booms across the gallery space. If this is the kind of alternative consciousness being encouraged, maybe I’m down with it. Whether the festivities are appreciated by Nádia Taquary’s bronze bird-women is unclear however. They don’t seem party types: their eagle heads bowed, they pray and adopt yogic-style poses around a great yellow tree, beaded branches hanging low from a bronze trunk. It is titled Ìrókò: The Cosmic Tree, and represents the orisha lord of ancestry in Candomblé, the Afro-Brazilian religion. More objects of worship are apparent too in a series of “altars” and “guardians” by French artist Carla Gueye, black clay obelisks with protruding breasts sat on beds of charcoal. Such votives become a recurring theme throughout the show, symbols of belief in this busiest of environments.

Specific materials reappear throughout the exhibition, too. Gueye’s briquettes are recalled in Emeka Ogboh’s The Way Earthly Things Are Going, a darkened room in which a series of spotlit tree trunks are embedded in circles of charcoal. Looped chanting emerges through speakers embedded in the wood. There’s charcoal, too, in Antonio Tarsis’s Orchestra Catastrophe: Act 1. Lumps of the stuff suspended on pendulums rhythmically hit a series of drums. Tree trunks pop up several times too, such as in Indigenous American composer Raven Chacon’s collaboration with producer Laima Leyton and former Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera. The wood is again spotlit in spectacular fashion and soundtracked, this time with a composition inspired by Brazilian Indigenous music.

Fabric and textiles, knotted, pleated and tied, are everywhere: Theresah Ankomah has wrapped the biennale pavilion in multiple nets Christo-style. Indo-Caribbean artist Suchitra Mattei invites us into an elegant tent made from twisted sari material and Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos has created a series of floor-to-ceiling pillars from found fabric that run throughout the show. On each level is one of Otobong Nkanga’s beguiling tapestries of the natural world (or the natural world despoiled) while Laure Prouvost’s giant kinetic pink textile orchid suggestively floats up and down the height of the building’s atrium.

The audio works take the form of spoken poems; there are chants and ambient electronica within installations, high frequency noise and hormonal humming, darkened rooms in which mechanical instruments play; there are smoke and mirrors, literal and symbolic. As he does at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, where he’s been director since 2023, Soh Bejeng Ndikung keeps signage to a minimum (so it’s often tricky to identify which work is by whom), and so the show shapes up as one giant sensory installation.

On the second floor, hints of urbanity creep in with a series of photographs of rivers by Wolfgang Tillmans. One shows a barge on the Amazon laden with cargo, in another we see the night-time illumination of a city on the shore of the Rhine. There’s another tent-like structure, though unlike Mattei’s silks, Zimbabwean artist Moffat Takadiwa’s walk-in sculpture is made of old bottle tops and strung together discarded computer keyboard keys.

This welcome bout of realism is continued in a multi-work presentation by one of Brazil’s most interesting artists. Gervane de Paula hails from Mato Grosso, which is called a “hinterland” state, and he aggressively plays with the cliches attached to rural culture, making hybrid wooden animals that mess with the vernacular art traditions of the region. Turning the cute souvenir on its head, two birds sport pistols for beaks. More disturbing still, the base on which they perch is marked “Comando Papo Vermelho”, a play on the name of one of Brazil’s biggest drug gangs. Like other artists in the biennale, de Paula has built an altar, but his is a cross with a Perspex front revealing it to be packed with prescription drugs: the artist’s sculpture is playful even as it riffs on the often grim reality of life beyond Brazil’s major centres.

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This sense of transgression – absent from some of the more obliquely sensorial works – is joyfully present in much of the historical work. Maria Auxiliadora da Silva paints wild scenes of parties in her 1970s works; the Moroccan painter Chaïbia Talal renders jolly couples in great impressionistic colourful strokes; while the fantastic Mozambican-Italian artist Bertina Lopez depicts glamorous women with red lipstick and matching nails in an art nouveau style. Even better are the forays into painting by the Rio de Janeiro samba legend Heitor dos Prazeres (a return for the artist, he was in the 1951 edition of the biennale): all cool-cat Black Brazilians pulling shapes and having a laugh on the streets, evocative and full of charm.

When I was lying on a hard metal bed, staring up at a light show projected on to the ceiling of Camille Turner’s domed installation, DreamSpace, a voice imploring me to “Send love to guide the path to truth”, I’d been close to that panic attack. I’m saved by a series of extraordinary five-metre copper scrolls by octogenarian artist Gōzō Yoshimasu; the Japanese lines inscribed on their surface are mostly obscured by the material’s slight reflection though, so really it’s just light and shade I’m staring at. It is extraordinarily beautiful. These calm and silent banner-poems are accompanied by Yoshimasu’s blotchy abstract watercolours on graft paper. They are titled Dear Monster and it makes me wonder whether I’m the monster for not being moved by so much of the clearly dearly felt art that preceded Yoshimasu. Yet after these hi-tech, AV-heavy simulacra of spiritual experiences, of nature and meditation, the Japanese artist seems proof that perhaps the best art doesn’t rely on complex bells and whistles.

Designer Maria Butt — known more popularly as Maria B — has submitted her defence to the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) in a complaint made in August relating to the designer’s anti-transgender rhetoric on social media. The complaint was filed against her by Saima Butt for defaming the transgender community.

The designer had designated her lawyer to appear before the NCCIA on September 2. In the response submitted by Barrister Mian Ali Ashfaq on behalf of Maria B, a copy of which is available with Images, she claimed she was exercising her right to free speech and expression under Article 19 of the Constitution. The response states that the designer was expressing “reasonable opinions on matters of public concern” and that her post was made “within the ambit of lawful expression” and in “good faith and for the larger public good”.

The response argues that, because the people in the video the designer posted were hardly visible and wearing masks, her post can not be taken as defamation against any individual. The complaint, Maria B’s statement claimed, was made with “malicious intent” to harass her.

The Lahore police booked around 60 transgender persons and others in August and arrested some of them for allegedly organising an “objectionable” private party after Maria B uploaded photos and videos of it on her social media accounts. Later, a magistrate dismissed the case against the transgender persons after no incriminating material was found connecting them with the commission of the alleged offences.

She had posted videos on her social media accounts, demanding action against “transgender activists” that she claimed featured in the clips, terming such gatherings “against the moral values of the country”.

This is not the first time the designer has made anti-trans remarks on her social media accounts. Recently, she celebrated the banning of a screening of Joyland in Lahore, describing it as a “shameful transgender satanic show”. Joyland is a film and was Pakistan’s official Oscars submission for the year 2023.

Discover more Featured Stories  like this in The Strad Playing Hub  

When I recently received a loan of a 1714 Antonio Stradivari violin from Carriage House Violins in Boston, I discovered something unexpected: getting used to a new instrument isn’t just about adaptation — it’s an opportunity for a complete technical reset.

This particular violin, from Stradivari’s golden period, carries remarkable history. It belonged to Franz Kneisel, founder of America’s first professional string quartet, and premiered Dvořák’s ‘American’ Quartet, along with works by Debussy, Ravel, and Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht.

But beyond its illustrious past, this instrument became my teacher, forcing me to recalibrate every aspect of my technique. Whether you’re adjusting to a new violin or seeking to refine your current playing, the exercises and ideas in this video can transform your approach as well.

The three dimensions of intonation

In my view, every note exists in three dimensions: how it sounds, how it feels, and how it looks. When adapting to a new instrument, let’s recalibrate these elements:

Sound goes beyond simple pitch accuracy. Each violin has unique resonance patterns — certain notes excite sympathetic vibrations, air modes and body modes differently. I practise slow scales, listening not just for pitch but for how each note activates these acoustical phenomena. When the violin suddenly ’lights up’ at certain frequencies, you’ve found its sweet spots. This Stradivari, with its slightly different string length compared to my personal violin, required me to rediscover where each note truly resonates.

Feel involves developing a physical map of your fingerboard. In fourth position, does your hand touch the instrument’s rib? Where does your palm contact the bout in high positions? These tactile landmarks become your GPS system. On the Strad, my usual reference points shifted slightly — what was a perfect fourth-position F on my violin was now slightly sharp. These millimetre differences matter.

Visual checkpoints might seem unconventional, but they work. Looking with my right eye, I can see where my finger intersects with certain visual markers to find specific pitches. It’s one more tool in the accuracy arsenal.

Shifting without a safety net

Most violinists rely heavily on ‘preparation notes’ — that quick moment where we touch the destination note before vibrating it. But practising ’air shifts’ removes this crutch entirely. You lift your finger, shift in the air, and land directly on the target pitch. It’s terrifying and transformative.

My favourite shifting exercise is single-finger arpeggios, moving through all positions, strings and fingers. The pattern I use to do this is quite simple, and doesn’t take long. The exercise also doubles as expressive training – treating each shift as a musical portamento rather than a mechanical motion.

Sound production reset

We know that sound production operates mainly on three interdependent variables: contact point (where the bow meets string), bow speed, and pressure. Many players get stuck treating these as separate parameters to adjust independently. Instead, I use an exercise called ’waves’ to integrate various parameters into a ‘feeling’ that one can manipulate. 

Using consistent bow speed, you create rhythmic indentations with your index finger, naturally adjusting weight and contact point in a pattern. The bow moves closer to the bridge with increased pressure, then retreats — like waves! This organic approach reveals the instrument’s pressure limits and optimal sound points without intellectualising the process.

This Stradivari surprised me — it accepts tremendous pressure without cracking, yet also produces that legendary golden, ethereal sound with the lightest touch. Each instrument has its own personality in this regard.

Chord playing as diagnostic tool

In the video below, I use Bach’s Sarabande from the Cello Suites (sorry, cellists) as a perfect vehicle for recalibrating chord playing and coordination. Every instrument has a unique threshold for how aggressively you can ’carve through’ multiple strings. Some require a gentle roll; others, like this Strad, allow you to drive through with remarkable depth as long as you maintain momentum.

I also discuss the importance of careful finger placement – especially for 5ths! Even high-level players naturally default to more pressure to ’push’ the 5th into tune. This is counter-productive and not reliable!

The broader reset

What struck me most about this experience wasn’t just learning a new instrument — it was how the process revitalised my fundamental technique. When everything feels slightly different, you can’t rely on muscle memory alone. You must return to conscious, deliberate practice.

This recalibration opportunity doesn’t require a Stradivari. Any change — a new bow, different strings, even returning to playing after a break — can serve as a catalyst for technical renovation. The key is recognising these moments not as obstacles but as invitations to rediscover and refine your craft.

For violinists at any level, the message is clear: embrace change, and keep things fresh. 

Listen to the 1714 ‘Kneisel’ Stradivari violin live in concert in the video below:

 

 

 Angelina Jolie’s starrer ‘Couture’ had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, and it turned into an emotional moment for the actress.

The Oscar-winning star, who plays a filmmaker battling breast cancer in the movie, spoke about her late mother, Marcheline Bertrand, during a Q&A session after the screening. Bertrand died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 56.

According to PEOPLE, when an audience member who had recently lost a friend to cancer asked the cast about their message of “hope,” Jolie grew emotional before responding. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” she said gently, before recalling her mother’s own words.

“One thing I remember my mother saying when she had cancer, she said to me once… people were asking her how she was feeling and she said, ‘All anybody ever asks me about is cancer,’” Jolie shared as quoted by PEOPLE.

“So I would say, if you know someone who is going through something, ask them about everything else in their life as well, you know? They’re a whole person and they’re still living.”

Take A Look At The Post: 

One of the most heartrending moments of #TIFF50: an emotional Angelina Jolie, supported by her colleagues and a rapturous audience, offers words of hope for people dealing with cancer. (She expresses condolences for the person who asked, who lost a loved one from the disease.) pic.twitter.com/x4Fatn4Ufl
— Brandon Lewis @ TIFF50 (@blewis1103) September 7, 2025

The actress was joined on stage by her Couture co-stars Ella Rumpf, Anyier Anei, and the film’s writer-director Alice Winocour.

Also Read| Angelina Jolie Reveals WHY She Wore Her Late Mom’s Necklace During ‘Couture’ Shoot

 

Winocour explained that while the film is about cancer, it is also about life itself. “We really didn’t want to depress you about cancer, quite the opposite. It’s about the spirit of survival,” she said. Winocour also mentioned how Jolie immediately felt connected to the story because both her mother and grandmother died of breast cancer, and she herself underwent a double mastectomy in 2013 to lower her own risk.

In Couture, Jolie plays Maxine, a filmmaker who takes a job in the Paris fashion world while navigating a divorce, raising a teenage daughter, and facing a serious diagnosis. 

“Tilda Swinton – Ongoing” is the title of a curated exhibition at Amsterdam’s Eye Filmmuseum, which will run Sept. 28, 2025-Feb. 8, 2026, allowing visitors to explore multihyphenate Tilda Swinton and some of her close collaborators.

THR can exclusively unveil a teaser video for the exhibition below.

“A unique and personal exhibition that centers on Swinton’s creative collaborations … will showcase new and existing work by eight artistic partners and close friends: Pedro Almodóvar, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg, Derek Jarman, Jim Jarmusch, Olivier Saillard, Tim Walker, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul,” says the museum, highlighting: “This marks the first time that Eye Filmmuseum has devoted such extensive attention to the creative influence of a performer.”

Swinton herself earlier this year described the exhibition as an opportunity “to reflect on the mechanics of my working practice over the past 40 years. And to come to rest on the – ever-present – bedrock and battery of the close fellowships I found from the very first and continue to rely upon to this day.”

She added: “In focusing attention on profoundly enriching creative relationships in my life, we share the narratives and atmospheres that inspire us: we offer new work, especially commissioned for the Eye exhibition, as the most recent gestures borne out of various companionable conversations that keep me curious, engaged, and nourished.”

The exhibition will also present a “contextual program” featuring the Scottish performer, artist, and fashion icon Swinton in conversation with “the artistic collaborators who have contributed new work to the exhibition. Complementing these live events, Eye will screen 40 films from Swinton’s body of work in its cinemas, alongside retrospectives dedicated to Joanna Hogg and Derek Jarman.”

So what can audiences expect from “Tilda Swinton – Ongoing”?

Guadagnino is creating “a new, intimate portrait of Tilda Swinton in the form of a short film and a sculpture,” according to Eye. “Together with childhood friend and filmmaker Joanna Hogg, Swinton will present Flat 19, a multimedia reconstruction of her 1980s London apartment and an exploration of memory, space, and personal history.”

Almodóvar will present his short film The Human Voice (2020), starring Swinton, in an installation format for the first time, according to the Eye team. Plus, “with a new edit, image treatment, and soundtrack, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch will transform existing footage from his absurdist zombie film The Dead Don’t Die (2019) into an entirely new installation.”

Together with the fashion historian Olivier Saillard, Swinton will also stage what is described as “a multi-day performance that brings a special wardrobe to life: garments from her personal collection, film costumes, red carpet dresses and family heirlooms.” They are also co-developing a special display of these pieces as part of the exhibition.

Meanwhile, photographer Tim Walker has visited Swinton at her family home for a photo series about “her connection to her forebears and continuity of place,” while Weerasethakul also visited Swinton at her home to create “an intriguing, meditative installation in which the presence of spirit and atmosphere becomes palpable.”

Finally, Swinton will pay tribute “to one of her greatest inspirations, filmmaker Derek Jarman (1942–1994), with whom she made a total of nine films,” says the museum. “A segment from The Last of England (1987) will be shown as an installation, alongside personal objects from Swinton related to their shared time and collaboration, as well as never-before-seen Super 8 footage, featuring Swinton as performer.”

The video teaser for “Tilda Swinton – Ongoing” at Amsterdam’s Eye features Swinton in various situations and outfits of different colors, but always full of the magnetism she is known for. Check out the teaser below.

There’s an art to the way Yumi Shin, Bergdorf Goodman’s chief merchandising officer, dresses. She plays with form like a painter at the easel—each layer deliberate, each accent exacting, and always with a personal flourish. Her signature strokes? A swoop of fabric curled over her shoulder, wind-swept hair tucked into a collar, a jaunty brooch pinned to a jacket lapel, a bold cuff worn over a sleeve.

Yumi, who has close to three decades of experience to her name—prior to joining Bergdorf Goodman seven years ago, she worked at Barney’s, Prada, and Saks Fifth Avenue—credits this alchemical approach to a handful of formative experiences. Her imagination was initially stirred during college as an art history student. Then came her first Comme Des Garçons show, which awakened “a new way of thinking and seeing fashion, as a form of creative expression rather than just clothing.” During her Barney’s days, early access and exposure to designers in their prime (Dries Van Noten, Prada, CDG, to name a few) gave her the freedom to experiment with shape and proportion. “Barney’s was my most creative time,” Yumi says of her six years there, then, “when I joined Prada, I learned how to build a wardrobe and incorporate investment pieces.” A soft spot for outerwear bloomed, and she became hooked on collecting coats and jackets (a passion that’s yet to be sated). When she moved on to Saks, where the dress code skewed more corporate, she found self-assurance in pieces from Sacai, mixed downtown edge with uptown polish. Towards the end of her tenure, she discovered Phoebe Philo, whose collections helped solidify her sense of style. Her clothes are “the definition of timeless,” she says of the quiet confidence Philo’s designs instill in her.

New York City might be home base for Yumi, but the always-on-the-go nature of her job means that when she’s not in a boardroom meeting, she’s at market appointments, nurturing relationships with new designers, or attending events, mingling with old and new friends. During Fashion Month, long days previewing collections stretch into weeks of international travel. To ensure her wardrobe works as hard as she does, Yumi says she prioritizes “comfort just as much as style”—and her go-to pieces thread the delicate balance of being creative and office-appropriate. She relies on staples from Phoebe Philo, The Row, and Prada to dress for a schedule that is objectively more 9-to-9 than it is 9-to-5, injecting a burst of joy into her looks with playful, personality-driven accessories. Yumi shows us how she does it, below.

Wear and Repeat

A proud outfit repeater, Yumi tells me she’s worn this pale yellow skirt from The Row all summer. The lace trim adds a feminine touch, and when she’s not dressing it up with heels (pictured are her current favorites, a suede, caramel-hued pair from Phoebe Philo), she says she likes to style it with an oversized T-shirt and flats. To contrast the femininity, here, she opted for a lightweight chore coat that adds rugged cool. “The barn jacket is thin enough that you can wear it as a blazer in the office.” For a cheeky wink, encouraged by her friend and photographer of this shoot, Tommy Ton, she strung a bounty of Loewe berries to her new Phoebe belt.

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Photo: Courtesy of Tommy Ton