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.”
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© Photograph: Monarchy/Regency/Kobal/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Monarchy/Regency/Kobal/Shutterstock
© Photograph: Monarchy/Regency/Kobal/Shutterstock
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.
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© Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
© Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
© Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
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.
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© Composite: Guardian Design; HARU; Dynamite Records; La Vida Es Un Mus
© Composite: Guardian Design; HARU; Dynamite Records; La Vida Es Un Mus
© Composite: Guardian Design; HARU; Dynamite Records; La Vida Es Un Mus
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.
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© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
© Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
© Illustration: Nicola Jennings/The Guardian
© Illustration: Nicola Jennings/The Guardian
© Illustration: Nicola Jennings/The Guardian
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
© Photograph: Sassy Chap Games
© Photograph: Sassy Chap Games
© Photograph: Sassy Chap Games
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.
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© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian
© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian
© Photograph: Gary Calton/The Guardian
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.
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© Photograph: Facebook
© Photograph: Facebook
© Photograph: Facebook
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.
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© Illustration: Nate Kitch/The Guardian
© Illustration: Nate Kitch/The Guardian
© Illustration: Nate Kitch/The Guardian
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.’
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© Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters
© Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters
© Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters
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.
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© Photograph: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United/Getty Images
© Photograph: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United/Getty Images
© Photograph: Serena Taylor/Newcastle United/Getty Images
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.
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© Photograph: Graham Denholm/CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images
© Photograph: Graham Denholm/CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images
© Photograph: Graham Denholm/CA/Cricket Australia/Getty Images
© Andreas Solaro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
© Li Muzi/Xinhua, via Getty Images
© Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images
© Nicole Tung for The New York Times
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