CULTURAL RADAR

Wonka
Release Date: December 15

After November’s release of Dune: Part Two, it’s time for a second round of Tim. Timothee Chalamet that is who stars in this Willy Wonka origin story. Helmed by the director of Paddington and Paddington 2, Paul King, the film deals with how Willie Wonka came to be a chocolate-making genius. From what details we can glean from the trailer there will be chocolate, a devious chocolate cartel intent on destroying Wonka, a hopeful orphan sidekick, and Rowan Atkinson as a member of the clergy. And Hugh Grant as the Oompa Loompa. Chalamet plays Wonka with child-like naivete rather than with the creepiness Gene Wilder originally brought to the role with lots of Dahl-esque wordplay. And it’s also a musical. This film could be the sugar-coated treat we all want at Christmas.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
Michael Lewis, Penguin, £25

Big Pharma had Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes, the co-working space had Adam Neumann, and now comes the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the enigmatic figure at the heart of one of the 21st century’s most spectacular financial collapses. Before November 11 2022 Bankman-Fried founder of crypto-currency trading platform FTX, was riding high. His company was allegedly worth $32bn, and then it all fell apart and Bankman-Fried was arrested on criminal charges of fraud and conspiracy. Michael Lewis, best-selling author of The Big Short, who got to know Bankman-Fried during his epic rise takes you into the mind of one of the most speculated about characters of the last decade. Both psychological portrait, and wild financial roller-coaster ride, this is a 21st-century epic of high-frequency trading and crypto mania.

Mr and Mrs Smith
November, Amazon Prime

It was the film that spawned a slew of “Team Aniston” and “Team Jolie” t-shirts, and now it’s back as a series with none other than Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino in Brad Pitt role. Teaming up with him as his wife and fellow assassin is Maya Erskine who made middle-school cringe-comedy Pen15. Also joining the cast is I May Destroy You and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Michaela Coel, and The Batman’s Paul Dano and John Turturro. Precise details about the series are thin on the ground but considering this is coming from the man who wrote Atlanta, a show that on the surface was a rags-to-riches narrative playing out in the Atlanta rap scene, but which shone a light on the lived Black experience in America for those in the margins, all bets are off and all guesses welcome. Expect to be surprised.

Norman Foster: Famous First Edition
Taschen, £350

His career spans six decades and he has designed everything from the Apple Building in Cupertino to the enclosed court of the British Museum to the Millau Viaduct in Paris. Through his practice Foster + Partners he has pioneered what he refers to as “a sustainable approach to the design of the built environment” and now, for the first time, his complete body of work has been published in one edition, offering a rare insight into the inner workings of his creative practice. Featuring previously unpublished images and sketches, handpicked by Foster, paired with nearly 1,000 illustrations, and a second book of eight essays explaining his sources of inspiration, this is a rare opportunity to see inside one of the great design minds of the 20th century.

The Battersea Poltergeist
BBC Sounds

Writer, journalist, and 2:22 A Ghost Story playwright Danny Robins fronts this docu-drama podcast that re-examines the evidence around one of the most intriguing and famous hauntings in British history. In January 1956, the Hitchings family of 63 Wycliffe Road started to experience strange phenomena – banging on the walls and ceilings, pots and pans hurling themselves across the room, a teenage girl levitating above her bed. This podcast, scripted by Robins (an east, rather than south Londoner), takes another look at this case going over newspaper reports, examining the notes of the paranormal investigator Harold Chibbett, who was involved in the case from the beginning, and he even talks to Shirley the girl who was haunted by the poltergeist and now an 82-year-old woman.

Marina Abramović, Royal Academy
23 September 2023 – January 1 2024

Art world icon and performance-art provocateur stages an innovative retrospective of her 50-year career. She is famous for such pieces as such pieces as Rhythm 0, which allowed the audience to interact with her in any way they chose, famously resulting in her having a loaded gun held to her head, and The House with the Ocean View, in which she lived in a house contrasted in the art gallery for 12 days. This retrospective will revisit key moments in Abramović’s career through live reperformance, video, installations, and sculpture. Staging the live reperformances will be individuals cast and trained by the Marina Abramović Institute rather than the artist herself. Different reperformances will take place throughout the exhibition’s run meaning no two visits will be the same. It promises to be a challenging and transformative experience. Tickets £25.50 – £27.50

DJ Shadow, Action Adventure
Late October, early November

Early this year, DJ Shadow (aka Joshua Paul Davis) confirmed that he had been working on a new album throughout 2022 and that he would be releasing it late 2023. According to the man himself, he is making a return to the instrumental-led vibes of his seminal 1996 debut album Endtroducing… and its follow-up The Private Press. Davis was keen to stress that this sound would be an evolution rather than a throwback, marking a move away from the collaboration-heavy recent releases such as the 2019 double-album Our Pathetic Age, which wasn’t a favourite among critics due in part to its mixed mood. Davis has said that the arrangements on Action Adventure are “sophisticated but efficient”, which should please fans of his first album with its crate-digger, 100%-sampled collage of hip hop and breaks.