Freak to queer bodies: affirming the grotesque in contemporary art - Frontiers

The main selling point of Tekken 8's Season 3 DLC pass, alongside veterans Kunimitsu, Bob and Roger Jr, is Yujiro Hanma, the main antagonist of fighting manga Baki and father of its eponymous protagonist. Yujiro was initially revealed in May through a trailer made up entirely of panels from Baki, leaving it in question just how a character that looks like that would be adapted into the Unreal Engine 5 hyper-realism of Tekken 8. The answer, apparently, is that Bandai just said fuck it, and let him look inevitably grotesque. The first look at Yujiro in-game arrived during Evo France (where Marvel Tōkon also revealed a bunch of new fighters), with a trailer featuring just a quick tease of his intro animation. Inexplicable flexibility, absurdly huge musculature and horrifying grin on show, Yujiro is horrible to look at. Which, I guess, is the intent? This is kinda just how he looks in the manga, too, but seeing him alongside the rest of the Tekken cast is very jarring. Some part of me hopes he's low tier just so I can see less of him on tournament streams, but somehow I doubt that'll happen: his whole thing is being The Strongest Creature on Earth, after all.

This weekend, the identity of the next James Bond is finally expected to be known – to the insiders, at least. According to reports, a number of youngish British actors – definitely three, possibly five – will have their final screen tests. To say it has been a long time coming is an understatement. It is five years since Daniel Craig was killed in a hail of missiles at the end of No Time to Die, and in that time – even long before it – a swarm of actors have been tipped to replace him, only to age out of the role due to a combination of indecisiveness and cutthroat backstage corporate shenanigans. Whoever is declared to be 007 will be joining the franchise after what is likely to be the longest fallow period in the franchise’s 64-year history. As such, this is kind of a big weekend. Let’s run through what we know so far. The candidatesIf three actors are to screen test for Bond this weekend, then they are Callum Turner, Josh O’Connor and Jack Lowden. If there are more – some outlets state that one other actor might be participating, others two – then they won’t include Jack O’Connell or Jacob Elordi, who are both out of the race for one reason or another.

Overheard in the auditorium during the interval: it’s like Tales of the Unexpected meets Jackanory. But if those references are dated by several decades, they go some way to summing up the strange mix of elements in this drama about a boy who goes missing from a village, and the ancient myth of a “green man” who might have something to do with it. But then, Max Porter’s novel, on which it is based, weaves so many seemingly incongruent parts together to create its own beautiful brand of rural noir. It might be better described as The Missing meets This Country meets Stranger Things, except the Upside Down here is English countryside. The story follows townie couple Robert (Raj Bajaj) and Jolie (Hanora Kamen), who move to the sticks and are just settling in when their otherworldly son, Lanny (Atlas Johnson-Dutfield on press night), goes missing. A local artist (Richard Cant), dubbed “Mad Pete” – for his bohemianism or, as a gay man in these parts, for his sexuality? – had formed a friendship with Lanny and is now considered prime suspect. The myth of a pagan figure, Dead Papa Toothwort, looms over the human drama as the police procedural unfolds.

It all began on a Dutch trading ship in 1628. No, really. When the Batavia set sail from Amsterdam, it crashed and the shipwrecked survivors were left stranded on a tiny island off the coast of Western Australia. As mutineers eyed the Batavia’s stash of silver, shipmates, friends and families turned on each other. About 100 people were brutally murdered, making it one of the most violent chapters in maritime history. Nearly 400 years later, in 2015, creative entrepreneur Marc Pos had a lightbulb moment while reading about this “adult Lord of the Flies” atrocity. It gave him the idea for a reality TV show – the game of trust and treachery we now know as The Traitors. It was originally envisaged to take place on a boat, with banished players jumping overboard into the sea. Co-creator Jasper Hoogendoorn joined Pos to develop the idea, The Mutineers. After 20 rejections, they fine-tuned the game further. Filming it on a boat was too limiting, so they shifted the action on to dry land – and looked for more aesthetic inspiration. Pos was once a choirboy in a 14th-century cathedral, gazing up at its spooky gothic architecture.