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23 hours ago | 
ca.news.yahoo.com | Ed Power
It’s going on for six and half years since the release of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch – the feature-length interactive episode of Charlie Brooker’s futureshock anthology series. But now there is one final twist in Brooker’s tale of an emotionally unravelling Eighties video game programmer: the entire thing has just been scrubbed by Netflix in an act of digital disappearing that could have come straight from…yes, a Black Mirror script.
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1 day ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Ed Power
"They asked us to push the technology, or to come up with ideas they didn't think they could quite pull off, and they would work out how to do them.
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1 day ago | 
irishtimes.com | Ed Power
It’s Eurovision 2025 week! Where is the contest taking place? The 69th edition of the Eurovision Song Contest is to be staged at the 12,000-capacity St Jakobshalle in Basle after Switzerland won the right to host with last year’s victory by Nemo with No Code. There will be two semi-finals on Tuesday and Thursday at 8pm, with the grand final on Saturday at 8pm. The semi-finals will be broadcast on RTÉ2 and the final on RTÉ One. Who is representing Ireland at Eurovision 2025?
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2 days ago | 
irishtimes.com | Ed Power
Gaslighting, fake illnesses, real pregnancies – and a trail of deception leading from Yorkshire to Kenmare. The first episode of the excellent two-part documentary Bad Nanny (RTÉ One, Monday) takes off like a true crime podcast on rocket boots as it tells the incredible story of Carrie Jade Williams, aka Samantha Cookes – a serial fraudster who posed as a terminally ill author when she moved to Kenmare, Co Kerry.
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2 days ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Ed Power
A re-release of the already disastrous live-action remake has made a pitiful $252 per screen. Who thought this was a good idea? Hi-ho, it's back to the cinema for Disney's flop live-action Snow White. Having originally crashed and burned in March, the movie misfired all over again after the House of Mouse re-released it in the US last week. Talk about putting the "grim" in Grimm Fairy Tale.
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3 days ago | 
yahoo.com | Ed Power
First-time Bafta TV awards host Alan Cumming had cautioned viewers against expecting wall-to-wall jokes. “I don’t see it as a stand-up comedy routine,” he told the Telegraph, and goodness was he true to his word.
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3 days ago | 
telegraph.co.uk | Ed Power
Musical guests seemed to have wandered in from next year's Brit Awards. Tom Grennan bashed out a song that asks the audience to imagine a mildly funkier Ed Sheeran. Then came Jessie J's big comeback as she made her first TV appearance in six years. Alas, the diva-like majesty of her power ballad was undermined slightly by the decision to have her start singing from the middle of the crowd - her performance accompanied by shots of audience members wandering back from the loo.
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5 days ago | 
irishtimes.com | Ed Power
Before flying to Dublin to compete in the Late Late Show Eurosong Special in February, the Norwegian singer Emmy Kristiansen had never set foot in Ireland. To make up for lost time she embarked on a speed run of Irish culture: eating Tayto, sampling (alcohol-free) stout and tackling a full Irish breakfast – which introduced her to the alarming concept of black pudding.
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5 days ago | 
irishtimes.com | Ed Power
Alicia Witt talks about kissing Madonna as if recalling a half-forgotten dream. “I was a huge fan,” the actor and songwriter says. “I mean, most everyone was. But I had listened to Bedtime Stories” – Madonna’s 1994 album – “on repeat. Then there I was, not only working with her but playing her girlfriend.”In her 40-plus-year screen career, Witt has collaborated with David Lynch, Nicolas Cage and Tom Cruise, in addition to releasing a series of searingly confessional albums.
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5 days ago | 
irishtimes.com | Ed Power
Many musicians have been engulfed in scandal, but in the case of Win Butler, of Arcade Fire, the reek of unacceptable behaviour has been accompanied by a whiff of hypocrisy. Blending the preachiness of U2, the rafter-raising earnestness of Springsteen and the mannered angst of Radiohead, Arcade Fire have, ever since their career-defining appearance at Electric Picnic in 2005 – a catalysing moment for performers and festival alike – carried the sense of being more than a band.
