The collaboration between the merc with a mouth and the clawed crusader has to work hard to mashup the alternate realities, but it could open portals to a lot of multiversal fun

It is somewhat ironic that just when the Marvel Cinematic Universe is entering its most intriguing phase, with the introduction of the multiverse and superheroes jetting in from all sorts of weird and wonderful corners of the Hollywood studio system, it has also begun to deliver its biggest duds. Chloé Zhao’s Eternals and Nia DaCosta’s The Marvels, Peyton Reed’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania all seemed dull and listless compared to the endlessly colourful and imaginative episodes that populated the comic book macro-saga’s earlier phases.

Is it any coincidence that these movies only lightly tinkered around the edges of multiversal goings on, while two of Marvel’s more successful episodes of recent times, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Spider-Man: No Way Home, doubled down on the concept of alternate realities? It is almost as if Marvel has become so enamoured of the creative possibilities introduced by other universes (who could blame them when it’s possible to port in Willem Dafoe’s Green Goblin or Patrick Stewart’s Professor X with just a flick of one’s magical, multiversal wrist?) that its film-makers struggle to get out of first gear when there is only one boring old single reality to play with.

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Gary Roden resigns as general manager after tickets cancelled and gigs forced to reschedule in Manchester

The boss of Manchester’s beleaguered Co-op Live arena has resigned in its opening week after tickets were cancelled and gigs rescheduled because the venue was not ready on time.

Gary Roden quit as general manager of the new arena after also being criticised for saying some small music venues were “poorly run”.

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It’s been eight years since I started, and I’m now 44 metres in. It’s taken its toll

I first set eyes on the Bayeux tapestry thanks to a wrong turn. My husband was driving us across France, missed an exit, and we accidentally ended up in the town of Bayeux.

I live in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire, but having grown up in Sweden, I’d only been vaguely aware of the tapestry. I knew 1066 was a significant date for the English, but history lessons had bored me at school. I’d always had a love of needlework, though – my grandmother taught me to embroider – so we decided to see it.

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The British-Ghanaian author on having his mind blown by Malorie Blackman as a child, the allure of John Williams’s Stoner and why Zadie Smith made him want to write

My earliest reading memory
Reading Biff and Chip in my first couple of years of primary school. I loved those books and was always desperate for the next one.

My favourite book growing up
Noughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman . Malorie was my local author – I grew up in Lewisham, south-east London, and she did too – it blew my mind, at 10 or 11, to have someone living near me who was writing fiction in which I could recognise some version of myself.

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It may have looked like something you’d see a bank teller use, but it withstood heavy battering. And it ran the coolest games

I have told my wife that I want a Mini Amiga for Christmas. I know it’s only April, but I do this with things I want in the hope that when it suddenly appears in the house next week, my wife will think she bought it for me. I have slipped the purchase of seven games machines, a stuffed tarantula and an air fryer under the radar this way. In an inconsistent world, I like the way this institution of marriage works.

I read the reviews and was surprised at the appearance of two words I never associated with the original Amiga: cool, and love . It might seem strange to say the Amiga wasn’t loved, because a lot of people bought and used one. But people use things every day that they don’t love: electric shavers, patience, door handles, the train.

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The Palme d’Or winner takes aim at the fashion world as models have a disastrous time on a luxury yacht, while Anne Hathaway falls for a boyband star in a swoony, steamy romance

Swedish film-maker Ruben Östlund has seemingly made it his life’s work to satirise the bourgeoisie – from the nuclear family in meltdown in Force Majeure to the pretentious art-world crowd of The Square . In this out-there comedy , he takes aim at the fashion industry via two models, Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean). Vain, petty and insecure, the couple go on an Insta-worthy trip on a luxury yacht alongside a group of super-rich types. But they find themselves all at sea – in more ways than one – after a disastrous storm flips the power dynamic between the guests and the put-upon staff. Come for the extended vomiting scene, stay for the class war.
Saturday 27 April, Netflix

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(PIAS)
The Manchester band sing about edginess and emotional danger, but never manage to give their beats any tension

You can imagine a private members’ club commissioning Porij as artists-in-residence: the young Manchester band makes dance music so smooth and so inoffensive that I can imagine it goes down a treat among the UK’s young, moneyed finance set. The title of their debut album Teething is a misnomer; even if it implies growing pains or an unsettled genesis, perhaps with a rewarding outcome, that rarely comes through on this record of neutered garage beats and platitudinal lyrics.

Throughout Teething, Porij allude to edginess or emotional danger, but it never comes through on the record. Marmite’s vengeful lyrics (“Haunt my life, I’ll haunt yours back”) can’t cut through its glazed poolside ambience. Sweet Risk, about entering a reckless relationship, conveys none of that tenuous sense of abandon in its weightless jungle beat. In recent years, dozens of other artists, from Avalon Emerson to Kllo and even TikTok chart-topper PinkPantheress, have more successfully fused underground sounds with heart-on-sleeve pop lyricism; in sanitising the sounds they’re referencing, Porij wind up behind the pack.

There are highlights among the haze. Stranger is a deeply affecting exploration of gender dysphoria whose lyrics are alternately guileless (“I just want to wear little shorts in the deep end”) and profound (“They were so close when they made me”). You Should Know Me is ingratiating simply by virtue of having a full, sinewy bass line; Gutter Punch, although borrowing liberally from Billie Eilish’s Bad Guy in its second verse, is destabilising and magnetic. For the most part, though, Porij can’t help but feel warmed over.

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Artists from Dua Lipa to Nia Archives are tapping the boisterous energy of mid-90s music – and even embracing the union jack. Can they avoid the genre’s laddish lows?

For some, Britpop was a high point for British guitar music: that time when Blur, Pulp, Suede and Oasis thrilled the world with wit and brio. Others argue it has aged worse than Loaded magazine: blokey, beery, conservative and still clogging up the charts. Indeed, there’s perhaps something a bit dismal about the fact that James and Shed Seven have both had No 1 albums in 2024.

Nevertheless, a crop of young artists are turning to the energy and iconography of mid-90s Britain for inspiration. The jungle artist Nia Archives, 24, wears a dazzling union jack on her teeth for the cover of her debut album, Silence Is Loud. “No one’s really making Britpop at the moment,” she told the Face in February, “but I have a feeling 2024 is gonna be the year.” Dua Lipa has said she was “looking through the music history of psychedelia, trip-hop and Britpop” while making her new album, Radical Optimism, adding that Britpop “has always felt so confidently optimistic to me, and that honesty and attitude is a feeling I took into my recording sessions” – although you’d be pushed to notice the influence on the new singles she has released so far.

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(Better Company Records)
The New York multi-instrumentalist, who has played with Philip Glass and Steve Reich, shows great flair for making minimalism rich and harmonically complex

Crowell has been an in-demand musician around New York for more than a decade – playing saxophone, flute and guitars with the likes of the Philip Glass Ensemble, the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Steve Reich and in his own outfits Empyrean Atlas, Spirit Stout and Eco-Tonal – but Point/Cloud foregrounds his work as a composer. Here he delegates performance duties to several very different ensembles – other guitarists, a percussion troupe, a singer and cellist – to create a diverse suite unified by a singular vision.

Minimalism is often robotic, repetitive and melodically stunted, but Crowell’s minimalism is wonderfully rich and harmonically complex: busy arpeggios sketch out dense, extended chords that constantly mutate and move in unexpected directions. The three-part title track, like Pacific Coast Highway, is a piece of baroque flamenco with Daniel Lippel multitracking multiple electric and nylon-strung guitars: it’s apparently inspired by Steve Reich’s Electric Counterpoint, but also nods to Vini Reilly and John Fahey.

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