As his epic crime thriller Heat turns 30, the director talks about pairing acting legends, his thoughts on AI and what’s happening with Heat 2

Hannibal Lecter’s first movie appearance was in 1986’s Manhunter, starring Brian Cox. It took director and writer Michael Mann just five weeks to adapt Thomas Harris’s novel Red Dragon for the screen.

But when it came to adapting his own work – Heat 2, co-authored with Meg Gardiner as both a prequel and sequel to his 1995 film Heat – Mann discovered the pain of self-editing. “I thought OK, 10 weeks, 12 weeks,” he reflects in a Zoom interview from Los Angeles. “Instead, it took like 10 months and it was arduous because I wanted the same effect as the novel, which required recombining events to fit within a two-and-a-half-hour timeframe. That selection became agonising to say the least.”

Restoration presented as rebuilding, but many see it as part of a broader Russification effort in occupied Ukrainian city

The Mariupol Drama Theatre, destroyed in a Russian airstrike in 2022 while hundreds of civilians were sheltering in its basement, is to open its doors again, with Russian occupation authorities heralding the reconstruction as a sign of renewal, while former actors at the theatre denounced the reopening as “dancing on bones”.

The Kremlin has made the reconstruction of Mariupol a calling card of its rule in occupied Ukraine, but Moscow’s oversight is accompanied by arrests or exile of critics, along with property seizures that have stripped thousands of Ukrainians of apartments they legally owned.

The pressure to conform in Japanese society made being a punk risky – even before you factor in the flamethrowers. As a new rash of reissues arrives, 80s stalwarts Lip Cream, Death Side and the Nurse recall the thrills and threats

A few short years after punk’s initial shock-and-awe inspired thousands of teenagers to spike their hair and learn three chords, the genre mutated into hardcore: a leaner, meaner and fiercely independent hybrid that would soon be tearing up squats, church halls and dive bars around the world.

Forty-five years on, hardcore is enjoying a moment in the mainstream thanks to bands such as Turnstile, Speed and Knocked Loose. There are hardcore bands on talkshows, in fast-food ads and on $40 T-shirts – all things that the 1980s artists would probably have gobbed at.

Exclusive: Planners behind postwar new towns hit out at government over lack of ambition and commitment to social housing

Senior planners involved in building the country’s postwar new towns have raised concerns about the government’s new towns programme, criticising a lack of ambition and insufficient commitment to social housing.

Lee Shostak, former director of planning at Milton Keynes Development Corporation (MKDC) in the 1970s and later chair of the Town and Country Planning Association (TCPA), said the current plan for the new towns may not help people who need homes the most.

Date a vending machine, watch intergalactic television and make the most out of your short existence as a fly. Here are the best games you weren’t playing this year
• The 20 best video games of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC
Have you ever wanted to romance your record player? Date Everything! offers players the chance to develop relationships with everyday objects around your house, in a fully voiced sandbox romp featuring over 100 anthropomorphised characters. Wonderfully meta; you can put the moves on the textbox, or even “Michael Transaction” (microtransaction – get it?) himself. Meghan Ellis

Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine, which has no affiliation to direct action group, informed by deputy mayor

A grassroots pro-Palestinian organisation in the UK has been told its bank account was frozen because of “an investigation into Palestine Action”, despite it having no affiliation to the direct action group.

Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine (GMFP), which organises peaceful protests and vigils, had access to its funds cut off indefinitely by Virgin Money after Palestine Action was banned under the Terrorism Act and the account remains blocked.

Brutal stabbing of Karen Carter, 65, in France has been followed by talk of affairs and speculation over the culprit

The quiet village of Trémolat nestled in the Dordogne valley is best known for its “cingle”, where the sinuous river forms an Instagrammable loop.

Home to about 700 people, along with restaurants, a cafe, boulangerie and wine bar, it is a picture-perfect French idyll and a popular place for a getaway or even retirement.

The conventions and rituals that define the way we do politics rapidly eroded this year – setting the UK on a course into the unknown

Was this the year that British democracy as we have known it began to turn into something else? Politicians, voters and journalists have made this claim before – when their side has been out of power for a long while, or when an elected government has been unusually dictatorial – and their warnings have usually been overstated. But this time the evidence of a fundamental shift away from a century-old status quo seems stronger.

Familiar landmarks have disappeared: Labour and Tory dominance, two-party electoral contests, the decisive power of a big Westminster majority, the patience voters usually show towards a new government, the predictable pendulum swing between right and left, the red lines between mainstream and extreme politics and even the central role of parliament.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Midfielder will be part of the conversation for a Ballon d’Or if he continues his ascent with trophies for club and country

Declan Rice likes to call it “clean feedback”, which sounds like a euphemism for a bollocking, though he would probably say that is a misconception. Rather, it is part of the reason why Rice is being discussed as one of the best players in the world.

“You can’t eff and blind, you can’t bully people,” says Terry Westley, the head of West Ham’s academy when Rice was there. “But we should be able to have a conversation and say: ‘Look, that ain’t quite good enough and we want to help you because this is what we need to do.’

Despite tactical flaws and a fixture pile-up, Eddie Howe still has a ‘glass half full’ attitude before Manchester United trip

Newcastle supporters are starting to regard Eddie Howe’s team as an unreliable friend. Catch them on the right night and they invariably prove the life and soul of the thrillingly high-intensity party but, on other days, the once-dependable Sandro Tonali and company simply fail to turn up.

As if that were not bad enough, their second-half game management has become suffused with a chaotic streak. Howe’s players visit Manchester United on Boxing Day having dropped 13 Premier League points from winning positions this season and are without a clean sheet in 10 games in all competitions. Victory at Old Trafford would be only their second away league win.

Pivotal items from the legendary leg-spinner’s career, including the ball of the century, make up the exhibit

“I feel like a medieval pilgrim being ushered into a chapel to behold some holy relics,” whispers Tom Holland as we head deeper into the bowels of the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The historian and The Rest Is History Podcast co-host, his wife, Sadie, and producer Dom are getting an exclusive look at some of the items that make up the new Shane Warne “Treasures of a Legend” exhibition soon to be unveiled at the Australian Sports Museum inside the famous ground. I’m lucky enough to be tagging along.

Jed Smith, the genial manager of the museum, is giving us Pom pioneers the sneak peek. Money can’t buy this access, but a global juggernaut of a podcast seemingly can. The night before Holland and his podcast partner, Dominic Sandbrook, had “played” the Sydney Opera House. They are fresh off the plane to Melbourne with a gig at the Palais Theatre in St Kilda later that evening, a few hundred yards from the very cricket ground where Warne first bamboozled with those fizzing leg-breaks.

This year has brought us some great movies – and also at least a dozen dire-one star disasters. Here are the Guardian’s critics on the pick of the year’s cinematic calamities

• Guardian readers’ best films of the year
• Peter Bradshaw’s film picks of the year
• More on the best culture of 2025

What we said: “Even the superest superfan of the legendary US TV comedy show Saturday Night Live is going to struggle with the unbearable self-indulgence and self-adoration of this exhausting film from director and co-writer Jason Reitman.” Peter Bradshaw
Read the full review

Previously vessels would be sunk once they had completed their cargo runs from South America to Europe

The plummeting price of cocaine is forcing drug-traffickers to reuse the “narco-submarines” they would previously have scuttled once the custom-built vessels had completed their cargo runs from South America to Europe, according to a senior Spanish police officer.

While semi-submersible vehicles have been used regularly in Colombia and other parts of South and Central America since the 1980s, they were not detected in European waters until 2006, when an abandoned sub was found in an estuary in the north-west Spanish region of Galicia.

Kateryna Endeberia says teachers made the ‘hurtful’ request when she had difficulty with other subjects

A Ukrainian refugee has been forced to drop out of sixth-form college after she said she was put under pressure to study Russian.

Kateryna Endeberia moved to Stoke-on-Trent after fleeing Ukraine in 2022, after the start of Russia’s invasion.

It felt like nothing would top Tiger Woods’s Masters win, but then the Northern Irishman completed his career grand slam on an extraordinary final day at Augusta

At 7am on 14 April in an Augusta rental home, Rory McIlroy awoke and immediately spotted a Green Jacket draped over a chair. “You think: ‘Yeah, that did happen yesterday,’” he says. “That.” McIlroy was now the sixth man to win all four of golf’s majors.

The detail of what lay around in the bedroom of my own Augusta billet is of no interest to anybody. That was, however, a memorable morning. I had previously and wrongly believed nothing would top Tiger Woods’s 2019 Masters win in respect of seismic reaction. Scores of messages from friends, colleagues, family members – umpteen of whom have no interest whatsoever in golf – had landed. Broadcast outlets across the world wanted my assessment of what had played out on Masters Sunday. Yeah, that did happen yesterday.

Penguins hand over pebbles; scorpionflies give spitballs. But I’m hankering after a sea sponge presented by a dolphin

This Christmas morning, are you worried you didn’t choose quite the right gift for that someone special? I always try my hardest, but everywhere I turn I’m bombarded with unhelpful suggestions. No, I don’t want a candle that smells like turkey, because, well, we’ll be cooking turkey. Nor do I want a sunrise alarm clock that mimics natural light, because I can leave the curtains open. And I definitely don’t want a salmon DNA pink collagen jelly mask (Good Housekeeping’s Best for Beauty Lovers), because said DNA comes from milt. AKA semen. If I wanted fish sperm on my face, I would tickle some pollocks.

So if, like me, you’re always looking for inspiration, my advice is: learn from the animal kingdom. Humans didn’t invent gifting. The practice has been around for at least 100m years, long before our species evolved. With a little help from natural selection, this has given wild animals ample time to perfect the art of giving. Hell, some spiders even gift-wrap!

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of Bring Back the King: The New Science of De-Extinction

The author and mental health campaigner on not fitting in at school, being on the Covid frontline, and how grief inspired him to help others

Born in Carmarthen in 1991, Dr Alex George is a former NHS doctor, an author and a mental health campaigner. After studying medicine at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, he worked as an A&E doctor in London before joining the cast of 2018’s Love Island. In 2021, he was appointed the UK government’s youth mental health ambassador. He is the author of five books; his latest, Happy Habits, is out now, with Am I Normal? published on 15 January.

Mum loved to make outfits for special occasions, and Christmas was no exception. It was an important time of year for our family; she was determined for us to experience the magic of tradition. It would have been a small, intimate day in Capel Dewi in Carmarthenshire – just me, my parents, my two brothers and my grandmother.

Peter is waging war on the water company but Winnie feels his policing of usage is overbearing. You decide whose argument gets flushed away

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Peter nags me not to flush the toilet after a wee, which is gross. I’m not up for being monitored

Everyone lets these water firms do what they like. It’s time to fight back. So we need to cut our usage

Rising numbers of people flee jihadists, as violence against civilians increases and foreign aid dwindles

More than 300,000 people have been displaced by an Islamic State insurgency in Mozambique since July, amid growing fears that authorities lack a workable plan to end the fighting.

With wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan attracting more attention and foreign aid falling, the grinding conflict in Mozambique has been largely ignored or forgotten. More than 1 million people have been displaced, many of them two, three or even four times.

The 1908 Tunguska comet changes the direction of history and gives rise to a weird new reality in this acclaimed epic from the Polish author

The opening sentence of this remarkable novel announces that the reader is in for an intriguing experience. “On the fourteenth day of July 1924, when the tchinovniks of the Ministry of Winter came for me, on the evening of that day, on the eve of my Siberian Odyssey, only then did I begin to suspect that I did not exist.” It may hint at Kafka in the ominous arrival of officials, or Borges in its metaphysical conundrum, but stranger things are afoot. In 1924 there was no tsar, let alone his bureaucrats, the tchinovniks. The date is significant, but I don’t mind admitting I had to find out why online. The time, as Hamlet says, is out of joint.

The rudely awakened sleeper is Benedykt Gierosławski, a Polish philosopher, logician, mathematician and gambler whose debts will be erased if he undertakes a special mission for the Ministry. He is to travel to Siberia, “the wild east”, and find his father, Filip, who was exiled there for anti-government activities. This is not clemency. Filip is now known as Father Frost, and as a geologist, radical and mystic, he might have a connection with what has occurred. The reader is drip-fed the details. A comet fell into Tunguska in Siberia in 1908, as it did in our universe. But here the event has caused the emergence of an inexplicable, expanding, possibly sentient coldness called the “gleiss”. Ice, which won the European Union prize for literature, came out in Poland in 2007, well before the Game of Thrones TV adaptation made “winter is coming” a meme; but in this novel, it certainly is.

With a turn by Mark Hamill and a saltily suggestive catchphrase for Patrick, the fourth SpongeBob film shows that anything can still happen in Bikini Bottom

Could the students who snickered their way through those first SpongeBob adventures have foreseen the franchise persisting 25 years on, even after metabolising the most lysergic pharmaceuticals? Such longevity is partly down to extra-commercial considerations, in that the series has a capacity for tickling adults’ funny bones – possibly even those now fully grown students – as well as the very young. Though it can’t claim anything quite as unexpected as the David Hasselhoff cameo in 2004’s The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie – not so much a high bar as an unforgettably wonky one – feature four thinks nothing of making Clancy Brown talk like a pirate while handing royalty cheques to Barbra Streisand and Yello. Anything can still happen in Bikini Bottom.

Preceded by a festive short for Paramount’s other weathered babysitters, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the new SpongeBob film soon settles into a familiarly goofy groove, its script a PG-rated treatise on the pros and cons of growth. This SpongeBob (once more voiced by Tom Kenny) is now 36 clams high, a source of particular excitement as this will allow him to ride the rollercoaster of his dreams. (One early, trippy laugh: our overexcitable hero’s imagined loop-the-loops.) As in the best contemporary American animation, though, the corkscrew plotting is the real rollercoaster. SB’s quest to obtain the fabled swashbuckler certificate that will prove him a “big guy” brings him into conflict with the Flying Dutchman, voiced by the suddenly ubiquitous Mark Hamill.

Memoirs from Liza Minnelli and Lena Dunham, essays by David Sedaris and Alan Bennett’s diaries are among the highlights of the year ahead

Over the past year we’ve been spoiled for memoirs from high-wattage stars – Cher, Patti Smith and Anthony Hopkins among them. But 2026 begins with a very different true story, from someone who never chose the spotlight, but now wants some good to come of her appalling experiences. After the trial that resulted in her husband and 50 others being convicted of rape or sexual assault, Gisèle Pelicot’s aim is to nurture “strength and courage” in other survivors. In A Hymn to Life (Bodley Head, February) she insists that “shame has to change sides”. Another trial – of the men accused of carrying out the Bataclan massacre – was the subject of Emmanuel Carrère’s most recent book, V13. For his next, Kolkhoze (Fern, September), the French master of autofiction turns his unsparing lens back on himself, focusing on his relationship with his mother Hélène, and using it to weave a complex personal history of France, Russia and Ukraine. Family also comes under the microscope in Ghost Stories (Sceptre, May) by Siri Hustvedt, a memoir of her final years with husband Paul Auster, who died of cancer in 2024.

Hollywood isn’t totally out of the picture, though: The Steps (Seven Dials, May), Sylvester Stallone’s first autobiography, follows the star from homelessness in early 70s New York to Rocky’s triumph at the Oscars later that decade. Does achieving your creative dreams come at a price, though? Lena Dunham suggests as much in Famesick (4th Estate, April), billed as a typically frank memoir of how how her dramatic early success gave way to debilitating chronic illness. Frankness of a different kind is promised in More (Bloomsbury, September), actor Gillian Anderson’s follow-up to her bestselling 2024 anthology of women’s sexual fantasies, Want.

From the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to Donald Trump’s territorial wishlist, test your travel knowledge. Every answer is the name of a country

Name the six countries or territories Donald Trump has said or suggested he would like to annex, acquire or take control of.