Antivirals: The deal of the century

The band Brace Yourself!, a quintet from London (not to be confused with Brace Yourself without exclamation, who are from Arizona) who play covers of pop hits at pubs, weddings and birthday parties, have made the deal of the century.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
08 April 2023 Saturday 21:53
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Antivirals: The deal of the century

The band Brace Yourself!, a quintet from London (not to be confused with Brace Yourself without exclamation, who are from Arizona) who play covers of pop hits at pubs, weddings and birthday parties, have made the deal of the century. In 2010 they were not called that, but Exit Through the Gift Shop, the sign that appears in so many museums and institutions, forcing visitors to go through the store and be tempted with merchandising. Then Banksy shot his mockumentary, which was to serve as both a chronicle and satire of the commercial explosion of street art, and he wanted to call it that, Exit Through the Gift Shop. To avoid copyright problems, they agreed with the group that he would give them a work as a gift, and he did so, he gave them a painting of a skeleton driving a bumper car. Thirteen years later, the group, which continues to play in pubs, has sold the work for 1.6 million pounds. In the photo of the day of the auction they appear enormously smiling.

Gwyneth Paltrow's study stay in Talavera de la Reina has already acquired mythical overtones – it is known that the actress and businesswoman stayed there with a family with whom she maintains contact when she was a teenager, to learn Spanish. She now has to weave the same legend for the time that Lana del Rey spent in Santander. Or Sant'andere, as the Cantabrian capital appears absurdly subtitled in a video circulating on networks in which the composer (whose album, Did you know there is a tunnel under Hollywood Boulevard?, is one of the albums of the year, without a doubt ) talks about his experience in northern Spain. In her first interviews here, she told how much it had impressed her to find "so many armed policemen" in Bilbao at that time. The funniest part of the video comes when Lana del Rey remembers that her Spanish parents were always yelling at her: Lizzie, turn off the light! Moment that appears subtitled as "Lizzie, turn off Lelouch!".

Speaking of Lana del Rey and her tendency to long titles, there was real expectation to know the name of the new and highly anticipated novel by Irene Solà. Anagrama even made a skillful teaser with it, previewing a mini-fragment of the book online and warning that the title was hidden there. Finally, Et vaig donar ulls i vas mirar les tenebres did not disappoint. It confirms Solà as a magnetic and enigmatic titler at the level of Ocean On earth we are fleetingly great Vuong. In 2019, a data analyst named Michael Tauberg had a feeling that book titles were getting longer and longer (after all, a decade was ending that began with Stieg Larsson's blockbusters and his complex gazetteer). ), so he dedicated himself to analyzing those of all those who appear on the list of The New York Times. The conclusion is that yes, that in a decade they had gone from 2.6 words on average to almost three. Solà, with nine, raises the average.

“I'm a psycho, you're a psycho,” Rachel Weisz says to Rachel Weisz in the Dead Ringers trailer. The British actress had done little in the world of series but now she quenches the thirst of her fans, who idolize her, appearing twice in this new version of the film Inseparable (1988), by David Cronenberg. There, Jeremy Irons played two gynecologist twins with blurry moral lines who end up dragged into disturbing 200% Cronenbergian paranoia. In the television version, which premieres on Amazon Prime on the 21st, instead of two twin doctors there are two fertility doctors, and the action moves from Manhattan to Vancouver. The psychosexual thriller tone is maintained, this time with a little more comedy, and the music of the eighties with a good synthesizer.

Laurie Colwin belongs to that subgenre of authors who, in addition to good prose, give you advice for life, like a favorite aunt. A writer in the kitchen, the book that Libros del Asteroide has just translated by the author, who died in 1992 but was highly vindicated by a generation of readers who barely knew her when she was alive, is full of these ideas and recipes issued with a high degree of authority (see his decalogue on fried chicken). In one of the chapters, titled Vomiting Dinners, Colwin talks about those occasions when she has to eat something disgusting at someone's house (she has also served some, she confesses, some disgusting spaghetti carbonara, for example). The thing to do on those occasions is to come home and make rösti, the grated boiled potato noodles that Colwin says is an excuse to eat medically unreasonable amounts of butter. "The result is somewhat indigestible, but after all, you will have already been subjected to a real bullshit."