‘There was a lot of addiction and trauma in my family’: why Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon plays a perfect Judy Garland

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As she takes on the icon in musical drama End of the Rainbow, Monsoon recalls a childhood spent watching Wizard of Oz on repeat – and explains why audiences are ready for trans performers in non-trans roles If these are strange times in America, they are particularly strange for Jinkx Monsoon, the 38-year-old actor, singer and drag artist who, since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013 and Drag Race All Stars in 2022, has become a huge breakout star. Monsoon, who has the white-lead-and-vinegar glamour of a 1930s movie star, has appeared on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall and in countless viral clips from Drag Race – and in other words is widely well known. And yet, she says, when she walks down the street in certain American cities, it is in a state of “not knowing if someone’s going to recognise me and be excited to see me, or recognise something about me and be hostile. It’s a really interesting dichotomy.” She lets out a huge laugh. “But it also keeps me humble, I gotta say.” We are back...
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The Black Demon review daft but fun giant-shark mayhem on Mexican oil rig

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Sincere performances and lively banter turn hokey into entertaining as Josh Lucas’s engineer and his family do battle with a megalodon

It would seem that megalodons are the menace of the moment. These ginormous sharks, thought to be extinct for millions of years, have been retro-spawned for entertainment purposes by the audiovisual-industrial complex – specifically in the Meg franchise but also on the Discovery Channel – because great white sharks, veterans of the Jaws movies, just don’t cut it any more. Still, in thematic terms there’s a throughline that connects most shark movies: one way or another, they’re all about the return of the repressed, with the sharks manifesting the oceanic subconsciousness’ raging, violent id that has been enraged by the human superego effort at mastery over nature. In the original Jaws, it’s not so much Bruce the shark that’s the big bad as it is the township’s greedy mayor, determined to declare the beach safe in the interests of capitalism.

Directed by American Adrian Grunberg, its screenplay written by Boise Esquerra working from a screenplay by Carlos Cisco, The Black Demon effectively sticks to this well-greased formula. Yes, there’s a ginormous shark pootling around the waters along the coast of Mexico, locally known as “el demonio negro”. But the real, nefarious behemoth of the deep is a leaky oil-drilling platform offshore that was installed by a fictional conglomerate known as Nixon Oil, the name itself redolent of right-wing gringo corruption. (Which is ironic because Richard Nixon, for all his sins, was the president who started the Environmental Protection Agency.) Paul (Josh Lucas) is an engineer who works for Nixon, and as the film starts he arrives in the town nearest to the rig he supervised building years ago, with his wife, Ines, (Fernanda Urrejola) and two kids, Audrey (Venus Ariel) and Tommy (Carlos Solórzano) in tow for a family vacation while he inspects the rig.

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