HemmersChess

Theatre troupe Combatants for Peace use their participatory theatre approach to find out what UK audiences would do in their shoes

Nour Shehadah and Chen Alon are both shaven-headed fathers in their forties. Shehadah is Palestinian and he spent five years in an Israeli prison for his activities as a leader of his local Fatah military. Alon is a former combat soldier and major in the Israeli army.

When they were combatants, both men would have considered the other with suspicion and fear. This week, however, Shehadah and Alon have been in Britain along with fourteen other Israelis and Palestinians for a series of events in Warrington, Coventry and in London aimed at helping end the Middle East conflict. The group are part of Combatants For Peace, an organisation that consists of former members of the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups, who have all decided to renounce their weapons.

Combatants for Peace is not the only group working for peace in the Middle East, but they are the only organisation that use theatre to spread this message. They employ a technique known as forum theatre that was first developed by the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal as part of the approach he named Theatre of the Oppressed. The group re-enact actual scenes from their own lives in front of an audience, who are then encouraged to stop being spectators and become 'spect-actors' - participating in the action.

"Theatre is an important tool for non-violent resistance", explains Shehadah. He admits he grew up hating Israelis, but after years of being involved in the military resistance .

"I participated in military activities to end the occupation" he says, "but I eventually changed my mind because after 45 years of fighting there had been no concrete results." When he was asked to head up a non-violent movement by a woman who had taught him at university he agreed, and began to study the works of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Combatants for Peace was formed five years ago after a group of 12 Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the territories met with four former Palestinian gunmen. Since that first meeting the group has grown and now has more than 150 members, and it recently won the prestigious Anna Lindh Award for Dialogue Between Culture.

"We are the only joint bi-national group that uses this technique" says Ben Yeger, the UK representative of the organisation and himself a former Israeli soldier. "The benefit is that it bridges difference in a way that talking does not do on its own."

During their theatrical performances the Israelis in the group play the Palestinians and vice versa. "There was one scene where I had to act like I was a Palestinian woman trying to get through a checkpoint" says Ricky, an Israeli female member of the group, "and for me, suddenly being forced to confront what Palestinians deal with on a daily basis, it was the moment when I completely understood what was being done in my name."

Trying to inhabit the world of the other side is also difficult for the Palestinian members of the group. Among the sixteen is one Palestinian man who was in prison for three life sentences for killing Palestinians who had been collaborating with the Israelis. There are also former members of Hezbollah in the party. "These are people who were educated to hate Israelis", says Ben Yeger, "so for them to even be in the same room as Israelis is huge for them."

In coming to Britain the members of Combatants for Peace were not simply interested in sharing their own personal stories: they also wanted to challenge audiences to think about what they would do. Troupe member Chen Alon says "we don't want our audience to criticise or just observe - we want them to put themselves in our shoes."

During Tuesday's performance at the United Reform Church in Coventry the group re-enacted a checkpoint scenario. Not everyone was happy to participate - one woman walked out in disgust at what she saw as the anti-Jewish slant of the scene.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians in Combatants for Peace are hardened to criticism from their respective communities. That men like Alon and Shehadah are even sharing the stage is, for Ben Yeger, a tribute to the power of theatre and a reason for hope. "No change happens without changing ourselves' says the former soldier 'and if people like us can change then surely others can as well."

A glamorous cultural marathon at the Serpentine Gallery complete with midnight feast aimed to bring dreams to life

Charles Arsene-Henry is grappling with an age-old sensation; one as powerful and mysterious as deja vu. "In a dream you know that you have suddenly understood something and you feel elated, but when you wake it is lost, or at least you don't have the grammar to express it," he explains.

Lying around the charismatic young French writer, listening to the impassioned words of his lecture, are more than 150 bodies, mostly huddled in sleeping bags waiting for dawn to break.

We are all locked inside Hyde Park during the last hours of a social and artistic experiment. This is Sleepover, a unique event staged in front of the Serpentine Gallery in the partial shelter of Jean Nouvel's bright red summer pavilion. Part of a growing fashion for arts events that refuse to bring down the curtain in time for the last train home, the glamorous cultural marathon started with cocktails at 8.30pm on Friday and ran through the night to breakfast at 8am yesterday.

Sleepovers, it turns out, are not just for eight-year-olds. Judging from the crowd who have bought tickets to spend the night inside the pavilion, they are for 28-year-olds – and even 58-year-olds. Complete with a midnight feast, complimentary toiletries from Harvey Nichols and freshly baked bread for breakfast, the programme of live music, films and seminars from leading artists and philosophers – including the German film-maker and actor Heinz Emigholz and the British psychoanalyst Darian Leader – examined themes surrounding the choice to sleep or to stay awake.

"We think this is the first time this has been done," said Nicola Lees, the event's curator. "We know there was one in New York based around Andy Warhol's 1963 film Sleep, but here we wanted to look at the whole concept of 'pulling an all-nighter'; in other words, the difference between staying up because you want to and actually having insomnia."

The distinction was made in a clear, if unorthodox, way at 11.30pm with the arrival of a "trifle-based performance" courtesy of the food artists Bompas and Parr. A troupe of performers wearing white jumpsuits carried in two puddings, one containing legal stimulants, the other soporifics. At the sound of a gong, bowls of the rival trifles were handed out in what looked like a cross between a religious ritual and a scientific procedure.

Eating our trifle, we also had the chance to digest the words of Leader's lecture on sleep disorders and dream. "Dreams are about how unconscious desire is smuggled into the conscious mind," said the founding member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research. "Freud thought dreams could carry unconscious thoughts that are unbearable to our ego."

Off stage, Leader admitted the event might not be quite illicit enough to qualify as a sleepover, something children love to do precisely because it breaks the normal rules. "This is a bit like a music festival without the drink and drugs," he said. But the connection between sleeplessness and artistic creation is a persistent idea that has given birth to several night-time societies and clubs across the city in recent months.

"There's actually not that much that is open all through the night in London, unless you want to dance," said Arsene-Henry, "so I have been going to the Brutally Early Club, which was set up by some friends and starts at 6.30am in Westbourne Grove. This is good if you wake up early, but for people who don't want to go to sleep, we set up the Hyper Early Club, which starts at around 3.30am."

Melissa Gronlund, who ran an Insomnia Lab at the sleepover from 2am to 3am, is more sceptical about the link between creativity and lack of sleep. "It is part of the myth of the genius artist. Emil Cioran, a Romanian philosopher, is responsible for elevating insomnia to the status of an ideology."

In fact, Gronlund suspects people come to this sort of arts marathon for the sense of community that it briefly creates. "I did wonder who the audience would be and I think it is quite sweet there are so many couples."

Earlier, at the cocktail party that opened proceedings across the park among the sacred silver and stained glass of the Victoria and Albert Museum, one stylish single thirtysomething woman was more practical about her prospects for the night. "My friends suggested it would be a good place to come to meet someone," confessed Rebecca Kleinman from London, "but, surprise, surprise, it seems to be mostly women and gay men."

At the end of the night, after a screening of Peter Brook's disturbing film of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, more than a hundred survivors were handed a customised journal of the last 12 hours contained in a white pillowcase embroidered with their initials.

Filing out of the pavilion as early morning rain set in, discarded and unused sleeping bags were collected for distribution to the homeless who sleep out in the city every night.

A variety lineup boasting more sex and sequins is challenging comedians' dominance on this year's circuit

If Edinburgh's annual fringe festival still speaks to you of backpacks and hordes of students in unwashed T-shirts, it is time to look again. The downbeat look is out; sequins and red lipstick are very much in. For while it may be true that standup comedy is still king of the fringe, sophisticated cabaret and its brash theatrical sister, variety, will be giving comics a run for their money this month.

"Comedy mirrors society and for a long time we have had a man standing alone in front of a curtain talking about himself," said Miss Behave, the subversive "crowd dominatrix" who comperes The Crack variety show. "That kind of comedy is not going to go away, but at the moment we want a little more. Audiences are saying 'Entertain us!', and cabaret performers walk on to the stage with that very much in mind."

Miss Behave, who will present a "smorgasbord" of jugglers, sword-swallowers and hula-hoop artists at the fringe, believes a more spectacular, even a more alarming, form of live entertainment is especially valued during economic doldrums.

As a result, venues devoted to the outpourings of alternative comedians since Ben Elton first performed at the fringe in the boom years of the early 1980s are increasingly making room for singing acts, burlesque artists and magicians.

Sketch shows and improvisational groups are still a big feature, but they now look decidedly like the old guard. Fresh interest in acts which typically combine humour and song reflects the burgeoning cabaret scene in London that has been boosted by the popularity of television talent shows.

Programmes such as ITV1's Britain's Got Talent have awakened an appetite for entertainment in its wider forms and the kind of music-hall traditions that dominated the West End in the early 20th century. Some of the acts to benefit from the cabaret trend are overtly nostalgic. The revered comic singers Flanders and Swann are reborn in Tim FitzHigham and Duncan Walsh Atkins's show; the Fitzrovia Radio Hour team hope to repeat the London success of their 1940s drama pastiches; while Morgan and West, the time-travelling magicians, will be bringing Victorian-style trickery to the festival.

Long-established cabaret groups are also riding the wave. Not only will comic singers Fascinating Aida be back this year, but Terry Cryer and Jackie Hockridge, the respective wives of Barry Cryer and the late Edmund Hockridge, have re-formed their 1950s double act to sing songs and tell anecdotes.

But those in search of modern cabaret, which mixes intimate torch song with a radical, transgressive chic, will also have plenty of shows to choose from.

The award-winning "cabaret diva" Meow Meow believes this sort of act is best defined by its compulsive energy. The venue did not have to be intimate, she said, but the experience did. "When I am body-surfing the crowd I will often say, 'Touch me! I am real. I am not a television.'" Appearing at Assembly@Princes Street Gardens in Feline Intimate, she said she wants to break down barriers with the intensity of her performance. "I am passionate about the blanding out of culture. I worry that we are rubbing the corners away so that everyone knows what to expect."

Meow Meow is far from tame – the name of her act refers to her feline looks and a vocal range that goes from purr to cacophonous in the flick of a cat's tail. "I don't want to do something that you can eat a meal while you watch," she said. "It is horribly easy to shock people."

Performers offering this kind of provocative cabaret include Maria Tecce, who gives us Strapless at Assembly@George Street, and Camille O'Sullivan in Chameleon. Circus Burlesque is also tempting punters with "sinful delights". Over at the Gilded Balloon, Mrs Bang is promising A Series of Seductions in 55 Minutes, while the show La Petite Mort: The Orgasm, at the Underbelly, is described as "a raunchy cabaret romp through sex and sexuality".

Many venues are acknowledging the thirst for more than the usual standup by programming comedians who will also sing. The Brothers Streep, seen on BBC1's Graham Norton Show, will be at the Gilded Balloon, while the beatboxing cabaret act The Magnets will be appearing at the Udderbelly Pasture.

According to Miss Behave, who appears at Assembly@Princes Street Gardens, live entertainment trends follow a cycle. The first phase is navel-gazing, the kind of act offered by lone stand-ups. Then audiences demand glitter and spectacle, before finally an era of anarchy and chaos dawns. Miss Behave believes this is just around the corner.

"I long for a time when no one will know what a performer is going to do next," she said.

The boy who lived on an asteroid whose tale was told in a classic French novella is being revived on TV, film and in print

The Little Prince's departure from Earth was as sad as it was mysterious: allowing himself to be bitten by a poisonous snake in an effort to leave the human world and return to the tiny asteroid-home from whence he came.

Beginning next year, however, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's blond hero, whose adventures have sold 80m copies since Le Petit Prince was first published in 1943, is set for a spectacular return to the planet that sometimes depressed him.

Up first will be an ambitious 52-part animated series following the new adventures of the Little Prince. A video game is also being developed, as is an exhibition associated with the book. In addition, the French publishing house Gallimard plans to publish 100 titles associated with Saint-Exupéry's book.

Finally, and most significantly, a major new animated 3D film is in production retelling the original story and produced by Aton Soumache and Dimitri Rassam.

Olivier d'Agay, president of the Succession Saint-Exupéry d'Agay estate, which looks after the author's intellectual rights, and who runs a youth foundation dedicated to his memory, has been instrumental in the reinvention of the Little Prince to make the character relevant to the 21st century.

Once again, the Little Prince sets off to visit neighbouring planets, but this time it is a more conventional adventure.

"He is back on asteroid B612, and the Little Prince is once again confronted by the snake, who has decided to put out, one after the other, the planets of the Milky Way," explains director Pierre-Alain Chartier, the series director.

D'Agay told the Observer: "We wanted to rededicate the Little Prince to the children of the 21st century. Originally Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote The Little Prince as an adult book. We wanted to touch children today with the Little Prince via new medias."

D'Agay, who has been advising the producers of the TV series, admits there was considerable trepidation when the project was mooted. "It was a headache. The most difficult thing was making up our minds how to adapt the character. "

The eventual decision was to confront the Little Prince with issues familiar to a young audience, including the protection of the planet and sustainability.

"He will help save the new planets that he visits. Not on his own. But he'll help fix the problems."

The original story of the Little Prince is about acquiring wisdom, as the boy leaves home and his friend, the rose, to visit other asteroids inhabited by a series of flawed figures before arriving on Earth. There, his assumptions are challenged before his pathos-filled decision to abandon his body and return home.

The Little Prince's lasting appeal has been guaranteed by its sometimes complex philosophical themes: about the nature of friendship, the search for knowledge, and social criticism which draws on some of Saint-Exupéry's own experiences – in the desert following a plane crash, and during childhood, when he lost a younger brother, François.

The popularity and singularity of the book, as well as transforming the character into a cultural icon, has led to many previous attempts to imagine what happened next to B612's most famous inhabitant. In the last decade and a half alone, three sequels have been written, including one by a niece of Saint-Exupéry's wife, Consuelo.

The author never had the opportunity to enjoy the original book's success. It was published while Saint-Exupéry was in the US after fleeing France following the 1940 armistice agreement with Germany, coming out barely a year before his disappearance in 1944 while flying a reconnaissance mission for the Free French Forces over the Mediterranean.

Before penning the poetic novella, which he also illustrated, the aristocratic Saint-Exupéry had been best known for his writing on aviation: Southern Mail, Night Flight and Wind, Sand and Stars – the latter describing how he survived a crash in the Libyan desert.

But interest in The Little Prince, far from diminishing over the years, has exploded. Some of it has been prompted by interest in Saint-Exupéry himself. Two years ago his crashed plane was discovered along with a bracelet belonging to the author. But the chief explanation is the enduring charm of the tale.

The book has also proved inspirational in other media. It was used as the basis for a Super Mario game as well as an episode of Lost. The Little Prince has also been used as a virtual ambassador for an anti-smoking campaign, by the energy services group Veolia, and by the computer group Toshiba as a symbol of environmental protection.

And while many admirers will be delighted, for some purists the television series to be screened next year may prove challenging.

The Little Prince in the television serial is encountered back on his asteroid with his rose and the wise fox who appeared later in the original work.

What would Saint-Exupéry have made of the latest sequel?

"It's going to be beautiful," says Olivier d'Agay. "He would have been delighted. He loved children."

Panel's chairman defends portrayal of 'curdled love' as reviews range from excitement to criticism of 'unbelievable misogyny'

Christos Tsiolkas's Man Booker-longlisted novel The Slap opens with a bang when a man at a suburban barbecue hits another parent's child.

But while some readers including, evidently, the Booker judges speak excitedly of the Australian author's bravery in tackling uncomfortable truths, others criticise the word-of-mouth hit as "offensive" and say it is full of "unbelievable misogyny". The Slap is turning out to be the most divisive Booker novel in years.

Although reviews from newspaper critics have been positive – "riveting from beginning to end," said the Guardian ; "Tom Wolfe meets Philip Roth," said the Los Angeles Times – readers posting reviews online have far more mixed opinions.

"Dull, boring and offensive," wrote one Amazon reviewer. Another criticised its "constant obsession with bodily functions, sex, and the f-word"; another wrote that "it had no heart, such terrible cynicism … I feel soiled after reading it".

The writer India Knight said she hated the book. "The whole novel has this ludicrous, comedy-macho sensibility – you get the feeling that if he'd been forced to read 'literary' fiction, Raoul Moat would have gulped it down in one sitting," said Knight.

"It's also unbelievably misogynistic, and I say that as someone who loves Flashman and Philip Roth ... There is no joy, no love, no hope, no beauty, just these hideous people beating each other up, either physically or emotionally."

The Slap is a bestseller in Australia, and UK sales are already rumoured to be colossal.

A publishing insider said the novel had sold 23,000 copies even before the Booker announcement, an almost unheard-of figure for new literary fiction from a relatively unknown author. The novel also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Neill Denny, editor-in-chief of the Bookseller, said that there "hasn't been a divisive book on taste grounds" in the Booker lineup for years.

The last time readers were really split over titles selected by judges was in 2003, when Martin Amis's Yellow Dog and Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time were both longlisted for the award and DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little went on to win it.

The former poet laureate Andrew Motion, who is chairing this year's Booker panel, defended The Slap, saying "quite unusually for a Booker book, the copy I read already had international bestseller written across it, which means that not everyone thinks it's a hateful misogynistic book".

He also took issue with Knight's comment that the novel was loveless, suggesting instead that "it's curdled love ... It's more complicated than being hate-filled. It's full of love that's gone wrong".

However, he admitted that he could "see why people might think it is misogynistic, in that the whole story is triggered by an act of male violence".

The artist hopes his 100 alpine statues will make people ponder 'What is this doing here?' and other existential issues

Gallery: David Levene photographs Horizon Field

Of course, someone just had to dress one. You go 2,000 metres up a mountain, see an iron statue of a naked man and what do you do but put a jacket on it.

The naked man is Antony Gormley and the setting is 150 sq km in the mountains of Vorarlberg where the latest and last of his field experiments – multiple statues of the artist dotted around in cities and landscapes – was launched today.

Horizon Field is one of the most ambitious of his projects and has taken five years to pull off: 100 cast iron versions of Gormley carefully winched by helicopters into the deep summer green countryside of the Austrian Alps, all precisely positioned – give or take 5cm – at 2,039 metres above sea level. In a few months, they'll be submerged in snow. Some are easy to find and touch; others are nearly impossible to reach. None, the organisers said with optimistic confidence, are on ski paths.

The statues are meant to pose big, existential questions. Who are we? What are we? Where have we come from? Where are we going? The answer to the last, when the Guardian asked hikers on the Diedamskopf mountain, was to the top. And then to the bottom.

"We go back Saturday," added Kristof Willemans-Verdonck, from Rumbeke in Belgium, on holiday with his wife, Ann, and their two young sons. "We saw the art coming up but I know nothing about the meaning of it. What's the meaning of it?

"This kind of art of is good, it's not Panamarenko [a Belgian artist known for his models of his imaginary vehicles], which is a good thing, I'll tell you."

On another mountain, Kriegeralpe, where Gormley today formally launched the project, the Sinnett family from Buckingham were wondering if the artist was following them. "We saw his figures in New York recently," said Paul Sinnett. "And now here. We weren't seeking him out."

His wife, Diane, confessed the figures weren't yet making her think about the future of humankind. "Coming down, it does feel a bit like they're watching you."

There was, it has to be said, a bemused reaction from most walkers. Gormley forgives them. "People shouldn't know what they think," he said. "It would be very boring if they didn't think 'What the hell is thing doing here?' or 'This is completely crazy.'"

He hopes the more statues people see the more questions they might begin to ask.

The plan is that the statues stay in the alps for two years but, who knows, maybe forever. "If it was possible, it wouldn't be bad," said Gormley. "It is completely an experiment and there are very reasonable questions to be asked about is this the right thing to do to an unsuspecting mountain."

Gormley and his collaborators have spent so long on this project because there are so many groups to talk to, including landowners, hunters, environmentalists, botanists, politicians, residents, skiers and on and on.

The figures are in the sort of place where the only sound you're guaranteed to hear is the clanking of nearby cow bells, where men wear lederhosen as if they were jeans and where you expect – any second – to see Julie Andrews spinning around about to burst into song.

The project, a collaboration with the Kunsthaus Bregenz, has been hugely complicated logistically, particularly because of Gormley's insistence on the figures being in a horizontal line, and involved the Austrian army and mountain rescue teams.

Cast iron figures of Gormley have been placed around cities and landscapes from Crosby beach to London to Australia to Calabria but the alpine project is the last of them, said the artist.

In Austria, most visitors will need to take a half-hour cable journey to see them – although some are visible from roads – and they will mean different things to different people from different distances. At 100 metres, the Gormley is defiant, standing up to everything, bring it on; close up he's vulnerable, lost perhaps.

Then there is the issue of spotting a statue, only for it to move after a few minutes – just some bloke in the distance admiring the scenery.

The 100th figure in the work was today attached to a concrete ventilator shaft in Albona. "For me it is now the beginning of the experiment," Gormley said. "Can human beings do together something that is not necessary, but in some way brings an extra dimension to everyday common experience."

Gormley said the work addressed a simple question: where does the human project fit inside the bigger question of the planet's future?

"The art work is in a way less important than the work people will do with these objects. The looking, the finding, the not finding, the relationship between something you can touch, you can see, you can imagine."

• Construction company and private equity firm are new owners
• Weinstein brothers beaten by price to buy Miramax back

Walt Disney today sold Miramax for $660m (£422m), the film studio that in its heyday reshaped Hollywood with a long reel of hits including Pulp Fiction, The English Patient and Shakespeare in Love.

Disney has offloaded the business to investment group Filmyard Holdings, dashing an attempt by Bob and Harvey Weinstein to buy back the company they founded in 1979 and had named after their parents, Miriam and Max. The sale includes the rights to a back catalogue of more than 700 films that include Chicago, No Country for Old Men and The Queen.

The Weinstein brothers got into the film business by acquiring the rights to foreign films and distributing them in the United States, with early hits including The Crying Game and Perdo Almodóvar's Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

They went on to break the Hollywood mould with critically acclaimed low budget films that scored big at the box office and became hugely influential, encouraging a boom in arthouse cinema. Disney bought the business in 1993 and although the relationship initially flourished, the Weinsteins began to clash with Disney bosses as their budgets got bigger and the film slate became less successful. The brothers quit in 2005 and set up a rival studio, but had spoken openly about their desire to buy Miramax back.

Disney had scaled Miramax down, cutting its releases to just three films a year and closing offices.

Filmyard Holdings is backed by construction tycoon, Ron Tutor, who runs Tutor Perini Corporation and the private equity firm Colony Capital.

Disney chief executive Robert Iger said: "Our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands".

The Weinsteins had secured backing for their bid from the supermarket magnate, Ron Burkle, who sold his Wild Oats chain to Whole Foods Market for $565m in 2005. He was unwilling to back a bid of more than $600m according to reports in the US.

The fraught relationship between the Weinsteins and their corporate bosses became evident when Disney's the then chief executive Michael Eisner refused to distribute Michael Moore's polemic of the Bush era, Fahrenheit 9/11.

The full lineup for this year's Venice film festival has been announced – but there's a no show for the new Terrence Malick

The full programme for this year's Venice film festival has been announced and, as predicted, many film-makers whose films weren't quite ready for Cannes will debut on the Lido. Somewhere, a Hollywood-set drama from Sofia Coppola, is amongst the premieres, likewise Vincent Gallo's Brown Bunny sequel, Promises Written in Water, apparently a black-and-white tale of a girl with a terminal illness.

Julian Schnabel's Miral, which follows Hind Husseini's efforts to set up an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of Palestine, also finds a home. However, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, which many had predicted would screen at the festival, is not on the list; nor that for the Toronto film festival, which directly follows Venice.

Other hotly tipped titles include Meek's Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt's follow-up to Wendy and Lucy, also starring Michelle Williams, and Takashi Miike's samurai tale 13 Assassins, a co-production between Japan and the UK, and as such, our only film featuring at the festival.

The out of competition lineup is most notable for featuring films by both Affleck brothers: Ben's The Town, a crime thriller in which he stars as well as directs, and Casey's Joaquin Phoenix mockumentary.

The opening night film, Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan, had previously been announced, as had Julie Taymor's The Tempest, which closes the festival on 11 September.

In competition

Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky (US) (opening night film)

La Pecora Nera, Ascanio Celestini (Italy)

Somewhere, Sofia Coppola (US)

Happy Few, Antony Cordier (France)

The Solitude of Prime Numbers, Saverio Costanzo (Italy, Germany, France)

Silent Souls, Aleksei Fedorchenko (Russia)

Promises Written in Water, Vincent Gallo (US)

Road to Nowhere, Monte Hellman (US)

Balada Triste de Trompeta, Alex de la Iglesia (Spain, France)

Venus Noir, Abdellatif Kechiche (France)

Post Mortem, Pablo Larrain (Chile, Mexico, Germany)

Barney's Version, Richard J Lewis (Canada, Italy)

We Believed, Mario Martone (Italy, France)

La Passione, Carlo Mazzacurati (Italy)

13 Assassins, Takashi Miike (Japan, UK)

Potiche, François Ozon (France)

Meek's Cutoff, Kelly Reichardt (US)

Miral, Julian Schnabel (US, France, Italy, Israel)

Norwegian Wood, Tran Anh Hung (Japan)

Attenberg, Athina Rachel Tsangari (Greece)

Detective Dee and the Mystery of Phantom Flame, Tsui Hark (China)

Three, Tom Tykwer (Germany)

Out of competition

The Town, Ben Affleck (US)

I'm Still Here: the Lost Year of Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck (US)

Sorelle Mai, Marco Bellocchio (Italy)

Niente Paura – Come siamo come eravamo e le canzoni di Luciano Ligabue, Piergiorgio Gay (Italy)

Dante Ferretti – Production Designer, Gianfranco Giagni (Italy)

Notizie degli Scavi, Emidio Greco (Italy)

The Last Movie (1971), Dennis Hopper

Gorbaciof, Stefano Incerti (Italy)

That Girl in Yellow Boots, Anurag Kashyap (India)

Showtime, Stanley Kwan (China)

The Return of Chen Zhen, Andrew Lau (China, Hong Kong) (opening night, tribute to Bruce Lee)

Sei Venezia, Carlo Mazzacurati (Italy)

Zebraman (2004), Takashi Miike (Japan)

Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City, Takashi Miike (Japan)

The Child's Eye 3D, Oxide Pang and Danny Pang (China, Hong Kong)

Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male, Michele Placido (Italy)

All Inclusive 3D, Nadia Ranocchi and David Zamagni (Italy, Austria)

Raavan (Hindi version), Mani Ratnam (India) (Jaeger-LeCoultre Glory to the Filmmaker Award)

Raavan (Tamil version), Mani Ratnam (India)

Machete, Robert Rodriguez (US) (opening night, midnight)

1960, Gabriele Salvatores (Italy)

La prima volta a Venezia, Antonello Sarno (Italy)

A Letter to Elia, Martin Scorsese and Kent Jones (US)

Shock Labyrinth 3D, Takashi Shimizu (Japan)

The Tempest, Julie Taymor (US) (closing night film)

L'ultimo Gattopardo: Ritratto di Goffredo Lombardo, Giuseppe Tornatore (Italy)

Passione, John Turturro (Italy)

Lope, Andrucha Waddington (Spain, Brazil)

Reign of Assassins, John Woo and Su Chao-Pin (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong) (Golden Lion For Lifetime Achievement)

Space Guy, Zhang Yuan (China)

Twelve years after she converted from atheism, author of Interview with the Vampire abandons Christianity over its attitude to birth control, homosexuality and science

Twelve years after she converted to Christianity from atheism, bestselling author Anne Rice has "quit being a Christian" because of the religion's attitude to birth control, homosexuality and science.

In a message posted on her Facebook page, Rice said she was "out". "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen," the author wrote.

An atheist for decades, Rice returned to her childhood faith of Catholicism in 1998. The author of a series of bestselling books about the vampire Lestat – brought to the screen by Tom Cruise in the film Interview with the Vampire – her conversion caused consternation among her old fans, while Christians questioned the morality of her vampire books.

In a 2007 essay, Rice answered her critics, saying that she saw her earlier novels as part of a long tradition of "transformative" dark fiction, from Dante's Inferno to Hamlet and Macbeth. "I feel strongly that dark stories demand that the audience earn the transformation; they require a certain suffering on the part of the audience as the price of eventual affirmation," Rice wrote.

"I would like to submit that my vampire novels and other novels I've written ... are attempting to be transformative stories as well. All these novels involve a strong moral compass. Evil is never glorified in these books; on the contrary, the continuing battle against evil is the subject of the work. The search for the good is the subject of the work. [They] are not immoral works. They are not Satanic works. They are not demonic works. These are uninformed and unfair characterisations of these books, and this situation causes me deep personal pain."

In 2002 the author "consecrated her writing entirely to Christ, vowing to write for Him or about Him". She began to write novels about the life of Christ, completing Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt in 2005, and publishing Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana in 2008 when she also released the memoir Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, about her conversion at the age of 57. She is currently writing a series about angels, in which a contract killer is recruited by a seraph.

Rice posted on Tuesday revealing her distress about a news story in which an American "punk rock ministry" said that "executing gays is 'moral'". "The bottom line is this … they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator," the Minnesota Independent - linked to by Rice - quoted the frontman of ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide as saying. "On average, they molest 117 people before they're found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?"

Rice was horrified. "No wonder people despise us, Christians, and think we are an ignorant and violent lot. I don't blame them. This kind of thing makes me weep. Maybe commitment to Christ means not being a Christian," she said.

Later that day, she linked to a report about the Westboro baptist church in Kansas, which "spreads the message that because the United States condones homosexuality, abortion and divorce, all Americans are going to hell", according to the story.

"This is chilling. I wish I could say this is inexplicable. But it's not. That's the horror. Given the history of Christianity, this is not inexplicable at all," Rice wrote, pointing to Gandhi's statement: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

"When does a word (Christian) become unusable?" she asked. "When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?"

The next day, Rice announced her decision to "quit being a Christian" – a comment "liked" on Facebook by almost 2,000 people. "I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity," she said. "It's simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For 10 years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."

Yesterday, the author reiterated that her faith in Christ was "central" to her life. "My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," she said. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become."

Stanley Tucci-directed film will reportedly focus on the thorny and funny sides of mother-daughter relationships

Meryl Streep and Tina Fey are to play mother and daughter in a comedy titled Mommy & Me, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Stanley Tucci, best known for starring in The Lovely Bones and Julie & Julia (in which he appeared opposite Streep), will take the director's chair. His behind-the-camera CV includes 2008's Blind Date and 1996's critically acclaimed Big Night.

The particulars of Mommy & Me's storyline are being kept under wraps, but the film is said to focus on the thorny and funny sides of mother-daughter relationships.

Besides starring in the sitcom 30 Rock, Fey has been nurturing a burgeoning film career, appearing opposite Steve Carell in the comedy Date Night earlier this year.

Colour-coded paperbacks launched in 1935 as cheap, disposable fiction have now become collectible items

When the first Penguin paperbacks appeared they cost just sixpence – the price of a packet of cigarettes – and were hardly intended to be enduring items.

But as the publisher celebrates its 75th birthday, Penguin titles are not only among the most recognisable in literature but also a magnet for collectors.

Penguin was launched on 30 July 1935 after publisher Allen Lane, travelling home from a weekend visiting Agatha Christie in Devon, was appalled by the lack of cheap but good quality contemporary fiction available at Exeter station. He came up with the concept of the Penguin paperback, bringing out a host of the colour-coded titles that summer (orange for fiction, blue for biography, green for crime), with works by Ernest Hemingway, André Maurois and Christie herself part of the launch list.

"Allen Lane didn't get much wrong [but] he thought Penguins would be ephemeral, disposable objects," said Steve Hare, owner of about 15,000 Penguins – he believes he has the largest collection in private hands in the world – and a trustee of the Penguin Collectors Society, which numbers 500 members today.

Hare owns the first 2,000 Penguins published, and is "most of the way through the third thousand, but there are some which are very difficult to obtain", particularly some titles published during the war.

"The great thing about them was that the economics of them meant that it only worked with huge numbers at cheap prices, so most of them are still around," said Hare. "But there are some great rarities, and it is not unknown for particularly rare copies to fetch around £500."

He points to one "classic rarity", Biggles Flies Again, which is "almost impossible to find", and to the "hugely rare" titles sent out to prisoners of war, such as Adrian Bell's The Cherry Tree and HG Wells's A Short History of the World.

But no one "collects [Penguins] because they're valuable, or to get rich", Hare says. An orange-striped 1937 first edition of HE Bates's The Poacher, numbered 83 in the main series, might sell for £5 to £8, depending on condition; a 1935 first edition of The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty – 17 in the main series –could make £6.

The sheer range of Penguin titles means there are many niches to covet. James Pardey, another member of the Penguin Collectors Society, has more than 400 science fiction titles, acquired for between £1 and £4 each.

A lover of modern art, he was drawn in after coming across a 1960s science fiction title with a Paul Klee painting on the cover and discovering it was part of a series with covers by contemporary painters.

His most prized possession is a 1976 John Wyndham boxed set with a slip-case depicting the author metamorphosing into a leaf. "It is obviously inspired by Magritte's leaf paintings from the late 1940s but it made Wyndham look morbidly ill [he had in fact died seven years earlier] and his brother was deeply upset by it," said Pardey.

"The latter wrote to Penguin and I guess they withdrew the set because it is virtually impossible to find today. I only acquired a copy very recently."

Hare's collection – 45 years in the making – has spilled out of his house into a garden shed and the attic, and keeps on growing as Penguin continues to publish titles he wants to include. He estimates the publisher has released "at least" 100,000 editions. "Penguin went through a fairly sorry time in the 1980s in terms of design but now they've got a couple of really good art directors, turning out books which are collectible objects, such as the Great Ideas series. Curse Penguin for still bringing out books."

Celebrations for today's 75th anniversary, taking place at Penguin's offshoots around the world, are only likely to add to his woes. Penguin US has asked tattooists to reinterpret the covers of six classic titles – from JM Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians to Martin Amis's Money – to mark the birthday year, while in the UK the publisher has chosen the novels it believes shaped Britain from the 1950s to the 1980s, bringing them out as the Penguin Decades series.

The Penguin Collectors Society, launched 40 years ago, is keen to reach out to a new generation of book collectors. "We're an educational charity, not a bunch of sad anoraks," said Hare. "[We're] not simply about collecting, but for anyone interested in graphic design, publishing history, illustration, and the joys and pleasures of the physical book."

Disney sells Miramax along with rights to Oscar-winning films to Filmyard Holdings, scotching rumours that the company's founders might buy it back

As the final curtain falls on Disney's ownership of Miramax, there is to be no fairytale ending – at least, not for founders the Weinstein brothers, who walked out six years ago after a row over the release of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11.

When the mouse house announced that it was putting its wholly owned unit up for sale in February, there were immediate reports that the sibling producers might try to buy it back. But it has been revealed that the new owners of Miramax are a property tycoon and the owner of a financial investment firm.

The company is now controlled by Filmyard Holdings Llc, whose principals are construction executive Ronald Tutor and Colony Capital chairman Tom Barrack. As well as the ability to use the famous Miramax name, the duo now control rights to more than 700 film titles, including Oscar-winning films such as Chicago, Shakespeare in Love and No Country for Old Men.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein founded Miramax in 1979, naming it after their parents, Max and Miriam. They sold the company to Disney in 1993, but stayed on as co-chief executives until the acrimonious divorce in 2004, which resulted from then Disney executive Michael Eisner's refusal to release Moore's anti-George Bush polemic Fahrenheit 9/11.

The brothers formed a new firm, The Weinstein Company, and, in their absence, Miramax fell on hard times. In October last year, Disney announced it was cutting staff numbers by 70% and reducing the number of releases from between six and eight to just three films per year.

"Although we are very proud of Miramax's many accomplishments, our current strategy for Walt Disney Studios is to focus on the development of great motion pictures under the Disney, Pixar and Marvel brands," the Disney chief executive, Robert Iger, said. "We are delighted that we have found a home for the Miramax brand and Miramax's very highly regarded motion picture library."

Tutor's nascent career as a film-maker was thrown into the spotlight earlier this month when film-maker David O Russell walked away from a long-delayed political satire, Nailed, following disputes over an apparent attempt to cut the pay of key crew members. Tutor had instigated efforts to reduce costs on the movie, which is due to star Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Biel, after taking a financial interest.xf

Scottish singer says new direction for forthcoming third album sounds like 'Eddie Cochran working with Leftfield'

After two folk-pop LPs, KT Tunstall is going "nature techno" for her third album. The Scottish singer unveiled a batch of new songs in London this week, ahead of the September release of Tiger Suit.

"I want to sound like Eddie Cochran working with Leftfield," Tunstall told the crowd at The Vinyl Factory. It was a "stripped-back" set, according to Billboard, which showcased the singer's new dance sensibility.

Besides new tracks Glamour Puss and (Still a) Weirdo, Kunstall revisited Other Side of the World, from her 2004 debut, switching from guitar to keyboards. Whereas her first two records were produced by Steve Osborne, who has worked with Doves and Elbow, Tiger Suit was made with Jim Abbiss, who has recorded Kasabian, Editors and Arctic Monkeys. Most of the tracks were laid down at the Hansa studio in Berlin, the birthplace of U2's Achtung Baby.

Although Tunstall promises songs about love, loss and, er, tiger suits, there's also one tune about Greenland. Uummannaq Song was inspired by a "bizarre" trip to the country in 2008, when Tunstall joined Feist, Jarvis Cocker and Laurie Anderson as part of a climate change delegation. "It was a horrendous creative rat race nightmare," she explained.

KT Tunstall's debut album, Eye to the Telescope, went five times platinum in the UK, while her second album, Drastic Fantastic, went gold. Tiger Suit is released on 27 September.

Donmar Warehouse overcomes limits of 250-seat capacity to stage Shakespeare's tragedy for live broadcast

One of the most keenly awaited Shakespearean performances of recent times – Sir Derek Jacobi's King Lear – is to be broadcast live in more than 300 cinemas across the world.

The Donmar Warehouse in London will announce today that it is to follow the National Theatre's example and will be filming King Lear during a performance next February.

It is one way of tackling a repeated criticism of the Donmar, with its tiny audience capacity of 250: that it puts on amazing theatre which too few people get to see. Michael Grandage, the Donmar's artistic director who will also direct Jacobi, said he was "regularly made very aware" of how small the audience space was and the theatre had worked very hard at broadening access, from always making seats available on the night to the one year residency in London's West End last year which included Jude Law as Hamlet.

The pioneering technology, used first by the Met opera in New York and then the National, works so well, said Grandage, "that it seemed an obvious thing for us to explore". Grandage said he was initially sceptical but saw both Phèdre and Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art at the cinema and was completely won over.

"It has taken me years to come round to the idea of having crossover in the two mediums, theatre and film. The crucial thing that makes it work is that it is live. Theatre is of the now, the day we are living. This is not going to go on to DVD. When you do see recorded theatre it always look dated and it seems in some way a museum piece, you look at it and think, 'How weird' and 'Why did they do that?'"

The nuts and bolts details of how the broadcasts will work have still to be sorted out, but Grandage is confident that Lear, with something like 22 performers, will not be marred by walking into cameras. The Donmar stage was, he said, bigger than people think. King Lear will also have a far bigger touring programme than previous Donmar productions and will visit Llandudno, Belfast, Glasgow, Milton Keynes, Salford, Richmond, Bath and Cornwall.

Lear is one of the great Shakespearean roles. Just as the best young actors all want tackle the huge demands of Hamlet, Lear is the one to take on towards the end of a career. Grandage said he and Jacobi had been on a journey towards it over recent years, working together on The Tempest, Don Carlos and Twelfth Night. It is also a while – perhaps not since Ian Holm at the Cottesloe in 1997 – since a major Lear was performed in a more intimate space.

The production, for which rehearsals start in October with it due to open in December, will also have in the cast Gina McKee as Goneril, Justine Mitchell as Regan, Pippa Bennett-Warner as Cordelia and Ron Cook as the Fool.

The National Theatre also plans to keep up its live cinema performances after the first season was seen by 150,000 people in 22 countries. In December Rory Kinnear in Hamlet will be screened and next year there will be the musical FELA! and Danny Boyle's Frankenstein.

Playwright's five-part BBC2 version of the first world war story Parade's End will be his first projects for corporation since 1970s

Tom Stoppard is returning to the BBC after a long absence by writing the screenplay for a five-part drama set during the first world war.

BBC2 has persuaded the playwright to dramatise the Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, a four-book series set in England and on the Western Front.

The last Stoppard projects for the BBC were plays in the 1970s, including Professional Foul, about a Cambridge don whose visit to Prague is hijacked by communism.

Ford's tetralogy, published between 1924 and 1928, established him as one of the country's finest novelists. He died in 1939. Stoppard is reported to be hopeful that the BBC2 drama will restore Ford's reputation, placing him alongside authors like DH Lawrence and Evelyn Waugh in the pantheon of early 20th century greats.

Ben Stephenson, head of drama commissioning at the BBC, told the Independent: "Tom Stoppard is without a doubt one of the world's finest writers and we are thrilled to welcome him to the BBC with his extraordinary, witty and hugely complex take on a complex work."

It will be made by the London-based production company Mammoth Screen but it is not yet clear when it will be screened.