Wham! 10 Days in China review – pop meets politics in George and Andrew’s great leap east

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The duo’s groundbreaking 1985 tour reveals a strange collision of pop stardom and communism, a re-edit of Lindsay Anderson’s efforts that got him fired Here is a documentary that has a very important story to tell, maybe more important than it feels comfortable admitting. It’s about two separate subjects – or maybe three: Wham!, China and film-maker Lindsay Anderson. A superpower nervously edging towards western-style openness, a pop band nervously doing what needed to be done to make it big in the US, and a great film director, needing the money, taking on a project he didn’t really believe in. In 1985, Wham!’s beetle-browed manager Simon Napier-Bell had a cunning plan for how George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley could break the US: Wham! would be the first ever western pop band to perform in mainland China. They would play where the Beatles, the Stones and Elvis had never played, and the resulting global publicity would launch them into the US. (He was right – it did.) In our modern ag...
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I survived the Barbie-Oppenheimer double-bill and I don’t recommend it

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The internet has become transfixed with the idea of watching Greta Gerwig’s bubblegum comedy next to Christopher Nolan’s dark drama but it proved to be a nightmarish combo

Few things have caught the public imagination in recent years quite like the concept of Barbenheimer. When Warner Bros scheduled the release of Barbie to run in direct opposition to that of Oppenheimer, directed by embittered former employee Christopher Nolan, the natural response was to pick a side. Both films were so diametrically opposed, after all, that the competition took on a slightly tribal air. Just who do you stand for? Drama or comedy? Joy or fear? Female empowerment or the death of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians?

But then something bizarre happened. Instead of picking just one film, people started latching onto the idea of seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer together, on the same day, as part of a wildly incongruous double bill. Tom Cruise said he was going to do it. Greta Gerwig posed with tickets to both. Despite spending the last few weeks looking palpably baffled by having to play 400 tinpot YouTube parlour games just to promote his movie, Christopher Nolan also seemed fairly into the idea as well. A rising tide lifts all boats, after all.

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