Culture Lane

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Culture Lane

Sunday, 13 January 2019 | Pioneer

Culture Lane

Britney Spears on indefinite hiatus

Britney Spears has announced an indefinite hiatus from work in order to care for her father, who is recovering from a life-threatening illness. The decision means that the launch of her show in Las Vegas, Britney: Domination, will be put on hold. It was originally scheduled to start at the Park Theater at Park MGM in February.

“I am dedicating my focus and energy to care for my family,” Spears said in a statement. “We have a very special relationship and I want to be with my family at this time just like they have always been there for me.

“Thank you to all my fans for your continued love and support during this time. I apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused and I look forward to the time when I can be back on stage performing for all of you.” Two months ago Jamie Spears, 66, was taken to hospital, and after his colon ruptured, he was admitted to surgery. After a post-operative period he was sent home, where he is expected to make a full recovery.

Spears recently finished a tour in Europe with Pitbull. The singer was reportedly set to continue work on her 10th album after her latest residency later this year. Her first four-year residency in Las Vegas grossed close to $138m.

LGBTQ gaming exhibition in Berlin

From Birdo, the 1988 Nintendo character described in the manual as a boy who “thinks he is a girl”, to Robert Yang’s recent Radiator trilogy, which includes an autoerotic game about pleasuring a gay car, there’s a surprisingly rich history of queer content in gaming. However, these instances are rarely portrayed as part of broader LGBTQ culture. Berlin’s Schwules Museum has opened a new exhibition called Rainbow Arcade, that does just this.

The show leads visitors around a rainbow, each colour a different section, covering the last 33 years of queer content in games through fan art, memorabilia and video interviews with designers — as well as playable titles such as Caper in the Castro, one of the first explicitly queer games. In this 1989 game, based around the famously queer San Franciscan thoroughfare, players take on the role of lesbian detective Tracker McDyke to solve the disappearance of her friend and drag queen Tessy LaFemme. Made by developer CM Ralph, the game was only recently rediscovered and turned into a playable format with the help of Dr Adrienne Shaw, who co-curated the exhibition with Jan Schnorrenberg from the Schwules Museum and German gaming journalist Sarah Rudolph.

The making cost of Mary Poppins

Disney has revealed it spent nearly £100m making Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel to the 1964 classic starring Julie Andrews, in Britain. The film, with Emily Blunt playing the eponymous nanny, brought some Christmas cheer to the British box office grossing £30m since it was released two weeks ago. London is also a star in the film, with some of the capital’s most famous landmarks used as backdrops for key scenes. The exterior of the Bank of England was used for the offices of the villainous banker, played by Colin Firth, and the finale of the movie takes place on the Big Ben clock tower.

It was made at Shepperton Studios in Surrey last year and Disney has shone a spotlight on its finances. Movie budgets are usually a closely guarded secret as the studios don’t have to report the budgets for them. However, the costs of movies filmed in Britain are consolidated in single companies which file publicly available accounts. The production companies usually have code names to stop them raising attention when filing for permits to film off-site. Mary Poppins Returns was made by the Cherry Tree Lane Productions — named after the address where Poppins works — which is ultimately owned by Disney. Its accounts for the 17 months to the end of June 2017 show that it had total costs of £98.6m and state that “the estimated final cost was forecast to be in excess of the budget”.

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