FILM
Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
After four previous instalments of Mission Nearly Impossible But Somehow They Pulled It Off, you know where you’re going here, and there’s often a feeling you’ve been there before: exotic locations, opera assassinations, car chases, high-tech MacGuffins, and a plot that puts Cruise’s spy crew out in the cold. But the bar is still pretty high, especially in terms of action set-pieces and authentic-looking daredevil stunts, which are surely a better outlet for Tom Cruise’s excessive zeal than Scientology. Steve Rose
TALKS
Them Off The Viz!
(Tyne Theatre & Opera House, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tuesday & Wednesday)
Anyone who has read Chris Donald’s hugely entertaining memoir, Rude Kids, will know that he isn’t a man given to the po-faced stoking of his own mystique. But when your mystique is essentially built around a roughly photocopied comic containing lots of cocks, farts and massive gonads, that’s probably for the best. Of course, Viz evolved well beyond that description, eventually becoming a surprisingly acute satirical organ (fnarr fnarr) containing lots of cocks, farts and massive gonads. This is ostensibly a Q&A with Donald and his brother and partner-in-crime Simon, but the event is to be helmed by Tyneside’s most eccentric magician, cabaret artist and escapologist Chris Cross, so who knows how far it might stray from that humdrum premise. Phil Harrison
THEATRE
Light Boxes
(Summerhall, Edinburgh, Friday to 30 August)
Summerhall is the upstart venue that, along with initiatives such as Forest Fringe, has changed the face of the fringe, proving that there is an audience during the Edinburgh shindig for genuinely radical work. The Scottish company Grid Iron may now be over 20 years old but it, too, changed the fringe in its day with its pioneering, site-specific promenade productions. This latest Grid Iron piece is a postmodern fairytale; adapted from Shane Jones’s 2010 novel, it is set in a world where it has been February for over 100 days and war looms in a town where everyone has been overcome by sadness. Lyn Gardner
The rest of this week’s theatre
TV
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp
(Netflix)
Remember how the stars of 2001 satirical comedy Wet Hot American Summer were all a touch old for their roles? Well now they’re all plenty older still and, in most cases, plenty more famous. Which, on the basis of the opening episode, looks likely to make this Netflix prequel even dafter and even funnier. With Amy Poehler, Jason Schwartzman, Bradley Cooper, Jon Hamm, Janeane Garofalo and many more on board, this now looks a stellar cast. Willingly, they travel back to 1981. Camp Firewood is full of the usual slackers, misfits and geeks. Just over the way, there’s preppie, stuck-up Camp Tigerclaw. Let the illicit liaisons, burping contests and air guitar marathons commence. PH
Read an interview with the creators of Wet Hot American Summer
FILM EVENT
Film4 Summer Screen
(Somerset House, London, Thursday to 19 August)
More like a festival than a mere outdoor-cinema event, Summer Screen now includes talks, DJ sets, activities and even premieres. Those include opener Gemma Bovery, with Gemma Arterton as Posy Simmonds’s heroine, Guy Ritchie’s revamped The Man From UNCLE, and Sundance-approved teen drama Me And Earl And The Dying Girl (director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon is also among the guest speakers). The rest of the programme is largely trusted modern classics – a True Romance/The Warriors double bill, Do The Right Thing, West Side Story and more, with family films and workshops in the afternoons. SR
The rest of this week’s film events
COMEDY
Limmy: Daft Wee Stories
(Glasgow, Aberdeen, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Manchester, London)
It might not be the biggest mistake the BBC has made in recent years, but not giving Limmy’s Show a full nationwide transmission must go down as a bit of a howler. The most consistently inventive and hysterically funny sketch show to emerge on British TV in years – and it was only available to viewers in Scotland, the lucky so-and-sos. Limmy is reportedly working on new TV projects, but in the meantime he’s bringing out a book of short stories, all of which reflect the idiosyncratic workings of his mind. This short tour marks publication of the book, and is the precursor to a major stage show planned for 2016. James Kettle
The rest of this week’s live comedy
EXHIBITIONS
Supernormal festival
(Braziers Park, near Wallingford, Friday to 9 August)
This pioneering experimental music fest in the Oxfordshire countryside proves that festival art needn’t be a fringey add-on. The near-30 acts in the programme fusing “visuals and sound” offer plenty for those who want to get their eyeballs rewired and their ear canals cleaned out. Check rising art star Benedict Drew, known for installations that mix mind-bending psychedelia and sonic overload, or underground film bastion Exploding Cinema’s dizzying show of multiple projections. Other offbeat highlights include performance art funnyman Angus Braithwaite’s latest mash-up of folk tradition and absurdist gags, plus a set from Glasgow-based “sci-fi anti-climax” outfit, Asparagus Piss Raindrop. Finally, for anyone who really wants to let go, Jennifer Walshe is staging “volunteer opera”. Skye Sherwin
The rest of this week’s exhibitions
CLUBS
Essence: Purified Dance
(Stane Street Syndicate, London, Saturday)
Clapham’s dance culture is based around Infernos and gawping at lasers at South West Four, but Bournemouth-based promoters Essence are bringing the underground to the area’s core demographic of twentysomething estate agents. They host a pair of producers who omnivorously place Miami bass, ghetto house, dancehall, kuduro, juke and rap on a spirit-levelled, irony-free plain. Neana cuts up booty-shaking snares into stutters, wedded to the kind of jingles you’d hear on Night Slugs or PC Music (check out his remix of Air Max 97, which sounds like the theme to a hospital drama in 2042). Sheen, meanwhile, hops from earnest trance to R&B slow-jams to hyped-up Afrobeats. If you want a sense of the polymorphous sonic mulch that emanates from formative years spent on the web – for free, in a pub – then get involved. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
MUSIC
GoGo Penguin
(Thwaites Festival Pavilion, Manchester, Friday)
GoGo Penguin, the young Manchester piano trio who have grown an international following over the past three years for angles that take in Aphex Twin, Debussy, Squarepusher and Massive Attack, return to familiar turf for the Manchester jazz festival. On their albums Fanfares and the Mercury-nominated V.20, the trio embraced the anthemic roll of the late Esbjörn Svensson’s music and the spacey chords and free-jazzy drum fills of the Bad Plus, but also darkly impressionistic electronic soundscapes, seductive pop hooks and big stadium rock climaxes. Dance music fans might be discovering the band, but their improv skills have kept more traditional listeners onside. John Fordham
The rest of this week’s live music
DVD
The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water
Our porous hero’s latest outing, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water, may strike newcomers as unintelligibly scattershot – blending as it does half-a-dozen animation styles, multiple stop-start plot threads and an attitude
to character development that is, to put it mildly, uncaring – but it’s worth remembering that these things have all been key elements of the show’s
MO from the beginning. In many ways, Sponge Out Of Water would not be doing its source material justice without a lengthy live-action subplot starring Antonio Banderas and a flock of CGI gulls. Charlie Lyne
Read the full review of The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water
