Film
Inside Out
According to Pixar’s bold new animation, the inner landscape is a cross between a theme park and a disaster movie – sounds about right. It takes place inside the head of an 11-year-old girl, whose uprooting to a new city triggers a crisis among her controlling emotions – personified as Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust and Fear. Thus, a sort of Wizard Of Oz quest is required to restore her mental balance. Consciousness experts might take issue with the conceit, but in terms of making a complex subject accessible and taking animation to new frontiers, it’s a triumph. Steve Rose
Comedy
Stand Up For Satire
Union Chapel, London, Thursday 30 July
We used to be good at satire here in the UK. But nowadays it’s hard to imagine us ever coming up with a homegrown equivalent to The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight. One reason for that is that channel controllers seem terrified of transmitting anything that could be accused of political bias, since Ofcom requires all broadcasters to maintain impartiality. It’s impossible for us to have our own Jon Stewart (or indeed to keep our own John Oliver) if our political comedians are forbidden from having a point of view. Of course, British comedy’s problems are minor compared to those of other countries, but it’s another reason to turn out in support of Stand Up For Satire. This benefit night, in aid of Index On Censorship, features politically engaged acts, including Labour cheerleader Gráinne Maguire, ramshackle philosopher Andrew Maxwell and the reliably incendiary Frankie Boyle. James Kettle
Film event
For Ever Amber
Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne, Sunday 26 July to Wednesday 30 September
The Amber collective made it their mission to document the lives of the working-class communities around them – a humble exercise that now seems remarkable, considering how few film-makers and photographers have done the same elsewhere, how slender Amber’s resources have been throughout their 47-year existence, and how much the landscape has changed in that time. This selection of Amber’s documentaries and low-budget, locally cast dramas shows you aspects of north-eastern life that are now all but extinct: women’s darts in North Shields, harness racing in Durham, drift mining in 1970s Cumbria, Newcastle’s Byker neighbourhood, pre- and post-Byker Wall. Proof that there is – or at least was – such a thing as society. SR
Theatre
946
Lost Gardens Of Heligan, Saint Austell, Saturday 25 July to Sunday 23 August
Kneehigh’s Emma Rice will shortly be heading off to become artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe in London, but not before she stages the latest Michael Morpurgo children’s book to make the transition from page to stage. Rechristened 946, there is nothing childish about Morpurgo’s wartime novel The Amazing Story Of Adolphus Tips, which was inspired by the catastrophic 1944 rehearsal for the D-day landings that left 946 people dead. Rice was given the novel by her mother, who told her that it would make a great theatre show for Kneehigh, and Rice obviously agreed. Lyn Gardner
Exhibitions
Richard Long
Arnolfini, Bristol, Friday 31 July to Sunday 15 November
Richard Long, AKA “the walking artist”, is renowned for works that, much of the time, no one ever sees in the flesh. His roadside interventions made from whatever is at hand – sticks, stones, a line drawn in the earth – are impermanent, crafted as he navigates landscapes that have, in his five-decade career, veered from rural Britain to Mongolia. What he brings back to show in galleries are photos, as well as texts and sculptures made from the natural materials peculiar to the places he visits. This major show in his home city of Bristol includes new works made from Cornish slate and mud from the river Avon, as well as a recreation of very early work from his 20s. He has also been commissioned to make a new piece of landscape art for the Bristol Downs: his Boyhood Line revisits routes familiar to him since childhood in white limestone. Skye Sherwin
TV
Life In Squares
Monday 27 July, BBC2, 9pm
It’s 1905. The Stephen sisters, later to find fame as painter Vanessa Bell and writer Virginia Woolf (Phoebe Fox and Lydia Leonard), throw away their corsets, discuss the dizzying idea of being “rid of napkins entirely” and help invent bohemianism. So begins a three-part portrait of the Bloomsbury group that, on the evidence of an opener that sees Vanessa marrying well-connected Clive Bell, and artist Duncan Grant bedding writer Lytton Strachey and JM Keynes, promises to be a quietly involving affair – sorry, series of affairs. Jonathan Wright
Music
Bugzy Malone
O2 Academy Islington, London, Tuesday 28 July
When Bugzy Malone dissed MC Chip (formerly Chipmunk) during a Radio 1 freestyle, he didn’t so much pick on an individual as a whole way of doing things. Rather than guesting on a pop-rave crossover hit, Bugzy is among those MCs (see also: Stormzy; the resurgent Wiley) leading the “grime revival”, returning to a more street-level music: jagged beats, videos filmed outside mum’s house, etc. Malone brings additional regional colour. From Manchester, he sounds fresh, not only because of his accent and subdued delivery, but because of their particulars. New EP Walk With Me may find him boasting about wealth, but his account of jail and his indifference to family feel original. John Robinson
DVD
A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
For an emerging film-maker, breaking new ground can be a poisoned chalice. A few years ago, the gentle childhood drama Wadjda became the first feature-length film shot entirely in Saudi Arabia, a landmark achievement that inevitably dwarfed the impact of the film itself. Director Ana Lily Amirpour may well avoid such a fate with her striking debut feature A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, hailed in its press release as “the first Iranian vampire western”, if only because it’s hard to imagine such a niche claim-to-fame inspiring many imitators. More importantly, that buzzy strapline doesn’t account for half the pleasures to be found in this silkily strange little film, in which genre awareness is always a part of the journey but rarely the destination. Charlie Lyne
Read the full review of A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night
Clubs
In Aeternam Vale
Electrowerkz, London, Saturday 25 July
If you have a predilection for dramatic coldwave synths and a generous holiday allowance, taking a week off to delve into the back catalogue of In Aeternam Vale is hugely recommended. The project of Lyonnaise producer Laurent Prot, he began in 1983 with irradiated analogue jams released over a dozen cassette albums. In them, you can hear everything from Raime’s burnt-out meditations to Miss Kittin’s arch pop and Nine Inch Nails’ clenched perversions. Hauled out of history by the Minimal Wave label, Prot then started releasing newer material, which speaks in the bell-clear vowels of digital production. He’s currently releasing thudding minimal techno, so for this rare live set expect slick PVC rather than the matt finish of leather. Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Dance
Fringe At The Place
The Place, London, Saturday 25 to Thursday 30 July
For the first time ever, The Place is programming new dance to present at the Edinburgh fringe, and by way of a preview, some works are getting a first showing in London. Billy Cowie teams up with Made In China for an eclectic triple bill bringing together classical Indian dance, Japanese butoh and a tale about our obsession with stories. In It Started With Jason Donovan, Sarah Blanc recalls comic memories of her early dating life through the hits of her favourite pop star; while Sweetshop Revolution’s I Loved You And I Loved You tells the story of the young Welsh composer Morfydd Owen. Judith Mackrell
