Category: 5. Entertainment

Finding the perfect summer dress is no mean feat. Something stylish which feels on trend as well timeless, so you can wear it year after year. Something loose and flowing for the hot, sticky days which will keep you looking glamorous even when you feel like you may genuinely be melting. Well, it looks like Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh has solved the dilemma, as she stepped out in a beautiful Zimmerman wrap dress. The best part? It’s now on sale.

For a visit to the Central School of Ballet last week (24 June), the Duchess wore an aqua green maxi dress with billowing sleeves by Zimmermann, featuring a watercolour style floral print. The dress is currently on sale across a range of sizes in various retailers, with the biggest discount (at time of writing) at Net-a-Porter, with 40% off, which would be an investment purchase.

You can also find it on sale in further sizes at Selfridges and there’s a similar version of the dress in lilac, which is also on sale:

Everley Plunge Midi Dress

For timeless, billowing summer dresses at a more accessible price tag, look to brands like Nobody’s Child, ME+EM, Boden and Aspiga (another favourite brand of Sophie’s). Here are a few of our top picks available online now:

Blue Watercolour Floral Anya Midi Dress, £150

Orange Floral Print Maxi Dress, £150

Billie Organic Cotton Block Print Dress, £195

During Sophie’s visit to the ballet school she toured The Countess of Wessex Studios – named in her honour, after her former title “in recognition of her longstanding patronage and support of the school” according to the royal family.

While she was there, Sophie was able to have a sneak peek of the rehearsals for an upcoming summer showcase as well as meet staff and students and receive a tour. Despite a busy summer of royal engagements, the Duchess was able to celebrate a personal milestone, during a day at Royal Ascot earlier this month.

Sophie and Prince Edward have now been married for 26 years, and spent their anniversary together at the races, which are an annual staple of the royal social calendar.

Could all this really be for one TV show?

On a humid, hazy night in Seoul over the weekend, Netflix staged its most extravagant fan event to date — a full-scale victory parade celebrating the final season of Squid Game, the candy-colored death drama that remains the company’s most-watched title of all time.

Stretching nearly a mile, the spectacle featured over 450 performers, airborne displays of Squid Game iconography, phalanxes of pink-suited guards, a brass marching band blasting the show’s eerie anthems, and a 25-foot-tall Young-hee doll with laser beams shooting from its eyes. The procession began at the city’s historic Gwanghwamun Gate and marched into Seoul Plaza, culminating in a massive fan celebration starring Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk and 25 of the most popular cast members from across the show’s three seasons. Netflix says the event took nearly a year to organize in collaboration with the Seoul Metropolitan Government, and that the crowd surrounding the parade swelled to as many as 38,000.

On the ground in Seoul, the moment felt so improbably outsized that it was hard not to impute broader narratives to the spectacle. Perhaps this was more about Netflix finally throwing itself a victory parade for its decisive triumph over the legacy studios in what was once cringingly referred to as “the streaming wars”? Or, thinking “local first” — as Netflix always does with its international content strategy — maybe the Netflix logo beaming over Seoul City Hall was just the natural end point of a U.S. tech giant’s full-scale takeover of the Korean entertainment industry, coyly disguised as an act of benevolence? At other moments in the evening — which included immersive video projections, star Q&As, dance sequences, an a cappella rendition of the Squid Game theme, and the crowd constantly going nuts — the celebration had the air of a raucous music festival. One where every band and DJ was Squid Game.

However jaundiced the perspective of the sole trade reporter in attendance, though, the vibe among the stars on stage and the legions of fans who turned out for the party was purely joyous.

“This has been a five- or six-year journey for me and I have so many fond memories,” Lee Jung-jae, who plays Squid Game protagonist Seong Gi-hun, aka Player 456, said from the stage. “I’ve been doing promotion and interviews in many countries [these past weeks], but watching the parade just now, it finally started sinking in that this is the finale and it’s all over,” he said. “I’m very grateful.”

Actor Lee Byung-hun, who plays Squid Game‘s mysterious villain, the Front Man, said he initially signed up for the project believing he would just be shooting a brief cameo to conclude the show’s first season. But after that season became a global phenomenon, he realized his journey was just beginning.

“When seasons two and three were greenlit, I realized I had to dig deep and understand the role — and that’s when I fell in love with this character,” Lee said. And although he’s been one of Korea’s biggest stars for over two decades, Lee said the Netflix hit held special significance in his long career. “Squid Game made history for Korean entertainment and being part of that has been an incredible honor,” he added.

Content creator Brian Skabeche traveled from Mexico to South Korea for Saturday’s event. Once in Seoul, he participated in a contest of Squid Game-themed challenges with over 100 international influencers and won the honor of being among 20 to walk in the parade in Young-hee’s shadow.

“There are people who came here from all over the world and it’s been a fantastic experience,” Skabeche told THR early in the night. “One guy told me he’s here because he likes the anti-capitalist message of Squid Game; other people are just super fans.”

Skabeche said he had never experienced Korean content before Squid Game, but he fell in love with the show while bingeing it with his sister, after she suffered an accident and was stuck at home recovering. “We both got hooked and it became this thing we bonded over,” he said. Later, Skabeche created a YouTube video with his influencer friends of their dogs participating in a mock version of Squid Game. The video was a hit and gave his channel a significant boost.

“It connected me with K-content fans, who I learned are a really great audience,” he said.

The scale of Squid Game’s success is indeed unprecedented. While Korean cinema had been building a cult following since the early 2000s, and K-pop exploded into global view as far back as 2012 with Psy’s satirical smash hit “Gangnam Style,” Squid Game astonished the world when its first season debuted on Netflix in September 2021. The show’s viewership started modestly, then snowballed into an organic regional hit before exploding into a bona fide global phenomenon. Within weeks, it became Netflix’s most-watched show of all time — a title it has never ceded. (Squid Game later also won a pair of Emmys for its creator and star — a first for the Korean industry.)

The show’s creator, Hwang Dong-hyuk, has spoken movingly of his mixed feelings about the way his brutal satire of late-stage capitalism’s rapacious inhumanity has resonated so deeply with viewers around the world.

Netflix, naturally, has only accelerated its investment in Korean entertainment, carving out a decisive leadership position in the country’s premium online video sector ahead of Korea’s top local players. In 2023, the company pledged to invest $2.5 billion in Korean content over four years — more than double the total of all its prior K-content investments. The power of Netflix’s global business model was another undercurrent to Saturday’s Squid Game extravaganza — the kind of spectacle and expenditure that could only make sense for a platform with the potential to leverage localized titles across an international subscriber base stretching into the hundreds of millions (or, several times more than South Korea’s total population of 51 million).

The runaway success of Squid Game’s first season heaped enormous pressure on Hwang, who famously writes and directs every episode singlehandedly. But season two — which took a full three years to make its way back onto global screens — nonetheless delivered, setting a new Netflix record for the most views in a title’s premiere week, and eventually rising to become the platform’s third most-popular show of all time. Squid Game’s fate returned to the audience last Friday, when season three launched worldwide.

“It was a really long journey, and I put my heart and soul into this work,” Hwang told the crowd in Seoul on Saturday. “Now that it’s all over, I have a bittersweet feeling — but I also feel a lot of relief.”

Not long after the director and his cast made their exit, the stage’s huge video monitors flashed a “Game Over” message above the crowd. Whether Squid Game — Netflix’s most valuable piece of IP — is truly over remains to be seen. A mysterious cameo from Cate Blanchett near the end of the finale — along with widespread industry chatter about a potential deal for David Fincher to direct a spinoff — would certainly suggest otherwise. For now, Netflix is staying quiet, basking instead in what one imagines as the pink glow of Season 3’s soaring viewership stats.

Actor Mehwish Hayat and Indian rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh are under scrutiny in the UK after a music video featuring children wielding imitation firearms triggered an official complaint to the British government, reported Deadline.

The video in question, for the song ‘Jatt Mehkma’, has amassed nearly 40 million views on YouTube since its release last November. While the track continues to enjoy success on YouTube, it has sparked concern among UK officials and social commentators for what critics call a “disturbing glorification of violence.”

Mehwish Hayat has denied any action against her, saying, “These claims are entirely speculative and misleading. I urge responsible media platforms to verify facts before sharing such narratives, especially when they can cause harm and perpetuate false assumptions. All such targeted misinformation is being documented.”

British MP Manuela Perteghella, who represents Stratford-upon-Avon in the West Midlands, has formally raised the issue with the UK Home Office, according to the publication. The four-minute video was reportedly filmed at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire and in Birmingham’s city centre. It ends with four young boys joining Hayat’s character and opening fire, using replica automatic weapons and shotguns, on a group of men.

Sources told Deadline that the Home Office is considering issuing exclusion orders against both Hayat and Singh, which would effectively bar them from entering the country. Such bans are typically not made public and the individuals concerned would be notified in writing of the action. No legal proceedings have been announced so far.

“There are serious concerns about the use of imitation firearms and exposing minors to violent themes,” a source familiar with the matter said.

Hayat, who was featured in Marvel’s Ms. Marvel series and is known for hit Pakistani films like Load Wedding and Actor in Law, has not commented on the complaint. Singh, one of India’s most recognisable hip-hop stars and the subject of the Netflix documentary Yo Yo Honey Singh: Famous, has also remained silent.

The video was directed by Mihir Gulati, with production support from UK-based Blue Bling Production House. However, its founder, Vipulkumar Sharma, clarified that his team only handled logistical aspects of the shoot.

The backlash has not just come from politicians. Shaykh Paul Salahuddin Armstrong, director of the Association of British Muslims and a chaplain at the University of Birmingham, also voiced strong criticism.

“As someone who has worked with vulnerable youth for nearly two decades, I find this incident profoundly disturbing,” he told the outlet. “To see British children brandishing imitation firearms in a stylised gang scene, filmed on our soil and facilitated by UK production companies, is not only a moral failure, but potentially a legal one.

“This is not art. It is the reckless glorification of violence, dressed up as cultural entertainment,” he added.

The video’s popularity has also prompted discussions around media regulation. Armstrong called on child protection authorities to investigate, although the UK media regulator Ofcom has limited jurisdiction over online music videos.

In light of the controversy, ‘Jatt Mehkma’ is reportedly no longer being considered for future BBC Asian Network playlists. A BBC spokesperson stated that each track is evaluated based on its musical merit and relevance to the station’s audience.

The UK Home Office, West Midlands Police, and other authorities involved have declined to give a comment to Deadline.

If you’re a fan of the Fast and Furious franchise – and you’re only human, so of course you are – then you’ll know that Fast X ended on one of the most operatically daft cliffhangers of all time. In short, Ludacris and Tyrese Gibson are apparently dead, having been shot out of the sky by a double agent. Vin Diesel seems certain to die, having ended the film at the bottom of a dam that Jason Momoa just exploded. And Gal Gadot is back. And the Rock is back.

All these threads need to be resolved urgently. And yet, Fast X was a box-office disappointment. The fourth most expensive film ever made, Fast X was the fifth highest-grossing film of 2023 and still managed to lose $20m. And suddenly the prospects of a sequel looked dimmer and dimmer. Or at least they did, until Vin Diesel stumbled across a foolproof plan to revive the franchise forever: human resurrection.

This weekend, Diesel appeared at FuelFest, a car enthusiast event in California. During his speech, Diesel gave an insight into how Fast and Furious 11 could make people excited about the series again. “The studio said to me, ‘Vin, can we please have the finale of Fast and Furious [in] April 2027?’ I said, ‘Under three conditions.’ First is to bring the franchise back to LA! The second thing was to return to the car culture, to the street racing! The third thing was reuniting Dom and Brian O’Conner.”

Now, within the context of Fast X, none of these things make sense. You cannot make a film where Rome gets nuked and Spain is devastated by a 30bn-gallon dam collapse, and then pretend like none of it happened so you can make a scaled-back little car-racing film in LA. Unless Fast 11 starts with Dominic Toretto waking up in a cold sweat and growling “Woah, I thought I was involved in one of the most egregiously ugly CGI blowouts in all of movie history, but it was just a crazy dream!” then the series cannot simply reset itself like this.

More worrying, though, is the promise to reunite Toretto and Brian O’Conner. This is for the simple reason that O’Conner was played by Paul Walker, and Paul Walker died 12 years ago. Needless to say, that didn’t stop them before. When Walker died, he was in the middle of making Furious 7, and production brought in his brothers to act as body doubles before VFX house Weta grafted a digital copy of Walker’s face on top of it. The results were actually fairly convincing, but this is arguably because the job was easier. The bulk of Walker’s performance had already been committed to tape, so they could carefully weave in additional shots without drawing too much attention.

But bringing the character back for an entirely new performance is something else entirely. They would have to create a digital Walker from scratch, and then convincingly voice him. You don’t need to be told that it’s tough to do it well. The Star Wars series has tried it repeatedly, with everyone from Peter Cushing to Carrie Fisher, and there is always something creepily plastic about the execution. Not even turning Harold Ramis into a ghost for Ghostbusters: Afterlife could mask how off-putting he looked. And the orgy of digitally created multiverse cameos that ended The Flash was the ugliest thing to be put on screen since, well, Vin Diesel drove down the side of a dam.

Surely the Fast and Furious franchise doesn’t need to debase itself by taking a beloved co-star and yanking him around like a puppet. You have to imagine that Diesel’s intention is to cut back on the full-tilt bombast and return to something with real emotional depth, but in reality that means he’ll have to spend a lot of his time emoting at a tennis ball, which doesn’t exactly scream nuance.

Plus, as much as I hate to say it, people don’t go and see Fast and Furious films for emotional complexity. They go because they want to see stuff smash into other stuff, ideally when some of it is on fire. If Fast 11 wants to pay tribute to Walker, then doing it in the credits might be the best way to go. After all, it’s hard to pay tribute to a colleague when there’s an exploding dam to outrun.

The exhibition is bright, beautiful and melancholy: an exploration of the loss of cultural and heritage sites in the Middle East destroyed by conflict and unsympathetic development.

Standing by the Ruins, a show by the Palestinian-Saudi artist Dana Awartani includes a recreation of an ancient bathhouse floor in Gaza believed to have been destroyed in Israeli attacks.

Another highlight of the exhibition, which has opened in Bristol, is a room dominated by billowing sheets of colourful silk representing a map of the Middle East with cultural sites that have been lost pinpointed by rips in the fabric.

A third space at the Arnolfini on Bristol’s harbourside features a recreation of another floor, this one appearing to be made of the sort of tiles typically found in the old quarter of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. Actually, it is made out of sand, a reminder of the fragility of such features as the buildings they are housed in are knocked down or modernised.

Dana Awartani has a diverse background. Her father is Palestinian while her mother is Palestinian and Syrian. Awartani was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and has Jordanian nationality.

She said the work in her exhibition, her first solo public gallery show in Europe, was inspired by the “strange dichotomy” of some countries in the Gulf booming while places such as Syria and Palestine were “obliterated”.

Awartani said: “The destruction of cultural heritage creates a sense of displacement in the local population. If you remember what happened with Notre Dame, it was devastating seeing it burned to the ground. It’s the same thing, but hundreds of Notre Dames.”

The first piece the visitor comes upon are recreations of the red, black and white floor of the Hamam al-Sammara in Gaza, one of the oldest bathhouses in the region but which is now believed to have been destroyed.

Awartani worked with a collective of adobe brickmakers – craftspeople of Syrian, Afghan and Pakistani origin – and deliberately omitted the final binding agent so the work, called Standing by the Ruins III (2025), is delicate.

The second large-scale piece, Come, Let Me Heal Your Wounds. Let Me Mend Your Broken Bones (2024), was created for the Venice Biennale last year. Sheets of handmade Indian silk are dyed with medicinal herbs and spices and represent maps of countries in the Middle East.

Awartani tore spots on the “maps” that matched sites where archaeological or cultural sites have been damaged. She then darned them. “It’s a cathartic, meditative experience where you’re mending something.” Sadly, since Venice, she has had to expand the work to take in new sites that have been wrecked.

It took two technicians six days to set up the third large piece at the Arnolfini. The work is called I Went Away and Forgot You. A While Ago I Remembered. I Remembered I’d Forgotten You. I Was Dreaming (2017) and is the recreation of a Jeddah floor made out of sand.

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Asked how it felt to see the works displayed in Bristol, Awartani said: “It’s really touching and moving for me to have that space to talk about it, you know, a safe space to be able to talk about what’s happening.

“I live in New York, which is a very different landscape politically, especially now. There’s mass censorship happening, cancellations of artists. I don’t feel that in the UK so far. It’s important to talk about these things.”

The exhibition runs until 28 September 2025. For details https://arnolfini.org.uk/