A new national U.S. survey finds that nearly 80 percent of respondents would be concerned about themselves or an expectant mother in their life in the midst of the current COVID-19 outbreak, with almost half expressing fear of going to a scheduled prenatal appointment.

A world-first study has demonstrated significant benefits to a premature baby's heart and brain function when held by the parent in skin-to-skin contact. Parent-infant skin-to-skin care (SSC) or kangaroo care, started in the late 1970s in Columbia when incubators to keep babies warm were not available. It is now widely recognized as a beneficial component of holistic care provided for pre-term infants.

An attorney who consulted with the defendants leaked video of the shooting to a local radio station, it was revealed Friday.

Marisa Bardach Ramel is co-author of “The Goodbye Diaries: A Mother-Daughter Memoir,” written with her mother Sally Bardach. As Mother’s Day approaches, I long to sit beside you, pour you some tea and talk about all the things.

From a veteran fire chief to a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, over 71,000 people have died in the United States from the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.Those we've lost come from all backgrounds and walks of life and include the very people -- first responders and medical staff, who are working so diligently to stem the tide of the infection and care for the sick. Variously described as heroes, caring educators and loving family members, they will never be forgotten. ...

When his alarm goes off at 3:30 a.m., 54-year-old Jeff Reid knows it's time to begin his day and prepare for an eight-hour shift on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic. As a grocery store worker, Reid never imagined he'd find himself in this position. Every day before his 5 a.m. shift, Reid prepares his morning essentials -- 1,000 milligrams of the powdered vitamin supplement Emergen-C and his morning prayers.

As novel coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, millions of Americans are spending more time at home.MORE: Here's everything coming to Disney+ in AprilBut whether you're doing so because of a job loss, working from home situation or otherwise taking part in the mass effort to stay safe, chances are you've been bored once or twice while living under quarantine.Thankfully, some very talented people have been creating extra-special performances and experiences that you can enjoy to help you cope with the new normal and that don't break any social distancing rules. ...

Systemic flaws within Glynn county’s district attorney offices led to a lack of action against the men involved in this ‘modern lynching’In the days and weeks after Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed, multiple Glynn county law enforcement officials failed to thoroughly investigate his death and, in one case, refused to allow police officers to make arrests, the Guardian has learned.Arbery, 25, was jogging through the neighborhood just outside Brunswick, Georgia, on 23 February when he was shot dead by two white men. Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, were charged with murder and aggravated assault on Thursday evening, after graphic video footage of the killing was released publicly and sparked national outrage.Lawyers for Arbery’s family have called the killing a “modern lynching” and decried the lack of action in the case prior to the release of the video, pointing to racial inequalities in the criminal justice system.In the police report, Gregory McMichael claimed Arbery “violently attacked” his son, who shot Arbery in self defense.Jackie Johnson, the Glynn county district attorney, refused to allow police officers who responded to arrest the two men, Glynn county commissioner Peter Murphy told the Guardian in a phone call on Friday.The police department was put in touch with one of Johnson’s assistant district attorneys after the shooting, but Johnson made the decision not to charge the father and son, the former having worked in her office for more than 20 years, Murphy said.“The police at the scene went to her, saying they were ready to arrest both of them,” Allen Booker, the Glynn county district 5 commissioner, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday. “These were the police at the scene who had done the investigation. She shut them down to protect her friend McMichael.”Days later, Johnson recused herself. Johnson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. By 27 February, George Barnhill, the Waycross judicial district attorney, and the second of three DAs on the case, took over. Less than 24 hours after seeing the video and evidence compiled by the police, Murphy said, Barnhill decided to not charge the McMichaels.“And so within 24 hours the Glynn county police had been told by two separate DA offices not to make any arrests,” Murphy said. “And obviously, they want to assume no responsibility for their actions.”On 2 April, Barnhill sent an email to law enforcement authorities saying the 25-year-old Arbery had an “apparent aggressive nature” and that his family were “not strangers to the local criminal justice system”.“Arbery’s mental health records & prior convictions help explain his apparent aggressive nature and his possible thought pattern to attack an armed man,” Barnhill said in the email, which was first reported by the New York Times.“What it appears is he was purposely trying to assault the character of the victim and there’s just no reason why,” said Chris Stewart, one of the lawyers representing Arbery’s family.The family have pointed to the McMichaels’ connection to local law enforcement both at the district attorney’s office and police department as evidence of systemic flaws and roadblocks in their search for justice. It was only after the video of Arbery’s death was released this week that the third DA’s office requested the Georgia Bureau of Investigations (GBI) get involved.On Friday, GBI director Vic Reynolds told reporters he could not “answer what another agency did or didn’t see” in the first two months of the investigation.“But I can tell you that based on our involvement in this case and considering the fact we hit the ground running Wednesday morning and within 36 hours we had secured warrants for two individuals for felony murder, I think that speaks volumes for itself.”In a 7 April email sent to the office of Georgia attorney general Chris Carr, Barnhill recused himself because his son worked on a case involving Arbery while working in Johnson’s office.Lee Merritt, one of the lawyers who represents Arbery’s family, said Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, found the connection between Barnhill’s son and her own on Facebook and brought it to the attention of his office.“She followed the links. That’s exactly how it happened,” he said to the Guardian on Friday by phone.According to a police report filed 23 February, Gregory and Travis McMichael grabbed their weapons, a .357 Magnum revolver and a shotgun, jumped into a truck and followed Arbery as he ran.In the email to Carr from early April, Barnhill references a “decent cell phone video of the entire shooting incident”, an apparent reference to the one leaked this week.Reynolds said on Friday that the investigation into the shooting, the video and the person who filmed it, would continue.“Every stone will be uncovered,” Reynolds said.

Gregory McMichael and his son, Travis, were both charged with murder and aggravated assault.

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- When the Glynn County Police Department arrived at the scene of a fatal shooting in February in southeastern Georgia, officers encountered a former colleague with the victim's blood on his hands.They took down his version of events and let him and his adult son, who had fired the shots, go home.Later that day, Wanda Cooper, the mother of the 25-year-old victim, Ahmaud Arbery, received a call from a police investigator. She recounted later that the investigator said her son had been involved in a burglary and was killed by "the homeowner," an inaccurate version of what had happened.More than two months after that fatal confrontation, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case this week, arrested the former officer, Gregory McMichael, and his son, Travis McMichael, on charges of murder and aggravated assault.The charges -- which came after the release of a graphic video showing the killing as the two white men confront Arbery, who was African American -- made clear the depths of the local department's bungling of the case, which was just the latest in a series of troubling episodes involving its officers.And it was one element of the broader potential breakdown of the justice system in South Georgia. Attorney General Chris Carr, through a spokeswoman, said Friday that he planned to start a review of all of the relevant players in that system.Carr's office has already determined that George E. Barnhill, a district attorney who was assigned the case in February but recused himself late last month, should have never taken it on. Among his many conflicts: His son once worked alongside one of the suspects at the local prosecutor's office.S. Lee Merritt, a lawyer representing Arbery's family, has called for a federal civil rights investigation focused not only on the men who pursued Arbery but also the broader justice system."It's small-town America," Merritt said in an interview Thursday. "Those counties, the law enforcement community there, they know each other well; they recycle officers in between themselves -- it's a very tight-knit community."Over the years, Glynn County police officers have been accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering with a crime scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside investigators.The police chief was indicted days after Arbery's killing on charges related to an alleged cover-up of an officer's sexual relationship with an informant. The chief, John Powell, had been hired to clean up the department, which the Glynn County manager described last fall as suffering from poor training, outdated policies and "a culture of cronyism."The Glynn County force was the sort of department where disciplinary records went missing and where evidence room standards were not maintained, leading the state to strip it of its accreditation.Arbery was killed after the McMichaels confronted him while he was running in the Satilla Shores neighborhood just outside of Brunswick, the Glynn County seat. But neither of the McMichaels was arrested immediately after the slaying, which occurred Feb. 23 about 1 p.m.According to a police report, Gregory McMichael said that he saw Arbery running through his neighborhood and thought that he looked like the suspect in a rash of recent break-ins. McMichael, 64, told authorities that he and his son, Travis McMichael, 34, armed themselves and began chasing him in a truck.Gregory McMichael had been a Glynn County police officer from 1982 to 1989 and later worked as an investigator in the local prosecutor's office, before retiring last year.Darren W. Penn, a lawyer and a department critic, said the Ahmaud Arbery case was "another symptom or sign of a police department that appears willing to protect those that they know."Penn is representing a woman who is suing the department over claims that it failed to intervene with her estranged son-in-law, a Glynn County officer, who killed her daughter, a friend and himself in 2018.County officials and a police spokesman could not be reached Friday for comment.From the start, McMichael's connections to the police department and the prosecutor's office presented other challenges.The first district attorney assigned to the case, Jackie Johnson, recused herself because she had worked with McMichael. The second prosecutor, Barnhill, advised Glynn County police that there was "insufficient probable cause" to issue arrest warrants, according to an internal document.Finally, the case moved to Tom Durden, the district attorney in Georgia's Atlantic Judicial Circuit in Hinesville, who this week formally asked the state bureau of investigation to get involved, according to a GBI statement. A Justice Department spokesperson said this week that the FBI was assisting in the investigation.Bob Coleman, a county commissioner at large, was critical of Johnson, saying she should have given the case to the state attorney general, not Barnhill. After the Georgia Bureau of Investigation made arrests this week, Coleman said, "That's what should have happened a long time ago before the sun went down. They killed a person in the bright sunlight."Glynn County is a marshy coastal corner of Georgia about 300 miles southeast of Atlanta with about 85,000 residents, and is known mostly for its mellow barrier islands and its rich African American coastal culture.Like many Southern communities, its history is studded with racial violence, including three late 19th-century lynchings. Today, the county is about 70% white and 27% black, according to census figures.On Friday, hundreds gathered under the moss-draped trees outside the Glynn County courthouse to protest, arguing that the handling of the case had been botched as months went by without charges."I will never call the Glynn County police to my house!" one of Arbery's aunts said.Mario Baggs, a lifelong resident of Brunswick, said he believed that race was a factor in Arbery's killing, given the unfair treatment black men have long received."The black man is an endangered species," Baggs, 46, said. "We need justice; we need relief; we need the world to pay attention."Yet he also believed that Arbery's case fit into a larger pattern of dysfunction.Over the last decade, the Glynn County Police Department, which has 122 officers, has faced at least 17 lawsuits, including allegations of illegal search and seizure.One suit accused the department of wrongfully killing an unarmed white woman after officers fired through her car windshield. An investigation into that shooting found that Glynn County officers had tried to interfere with the inquiry to protect the officers involved.One of the officers in that shooting later killed his estranged wife and a friend. The wife's mother accused police of ignoring several alarming encounters in the months before the killings.Powell, the police chief, was arrested this year along with three other department officials after an investigation into a disbanded narcotics task force. The inquiry found that Powell had actively tried to shield wrongdoing by the task force. That led to his indictment on charges including violating the oath of office, criminal attempt to commit a felony and influencing a witness.As details of Arbery's death slowly emerged and were reported in The Brunswick News, Arbery's mother, increasingly distraught, called the department. She said that she had been told one thing but that the newspaper had reported something else entirely.Cooper's faith was shaken. "It's hard when you can't really believe what authority tells you, you know?" she said. "When you just cannot believe the people that's supposed to look out for all people. And when you question that, it's not a good feeling."Attempts to reach Gregory McMichael late last month were unsuccessful. In a brief phone conversation late last month, Travis McMichael, who runs a company that gives custom boat tours, declined to comment, citing the continuing investigation.The two men made a brief appearance in Glynn County Magistrate Court on Friday afternoon, but court officials said they did not enter a plea. No information about their lawyers was immediately available.Questions about the handling of Arbery's case extend beyond the police department and to Barnhill, the prosecutor who told police that there was insufficient probable cause to arrest the McMichaels.In an email Barnhill wrote to the state attorney general's office April 7, he asked to be taken off the case, stating that his son, an assistant district attorney in the Brunswick prosecutor's office, had handled a felony probation revocation case involving Arbery. He also said Gregory McMichael had helped with "a previous prosecution of Arbery."Court records show that Arbery was convicted of shoplifting and of violating probation in 2018; according to local news reports, he was indicted five years earlier for taking a handgun to a basketball game.Barnhill's office most recently drew attention beyond south Georgia for its prosecution of a black woman in rural Coffee County who had helped a first-time voter use a voting machine in the 2012 election. In 2018, a jury found the woman not guilty of multiple felonies. Her lawyers called the case "a racially motivated targeted prosecution."J. Peter Murphy, a Glynn County commissioner, on Friday defended the Police Department's decision to make no arrests in the shooting of Arbery. Murphy said the agency had been advised not to make arrests by both Barnhill and officials at the office of Johnson, the district attorney in Brunswick who formally asked to be taken off the case four days after the shooting. Neither prosecutor could be reached for comment."Tell me what the agency did wrong when its men and women were told several times not to arrest anyone?" Murphy said, referring to police. "What were they supposed to do? Cuff these guys and walk them into the jail and have no one prosecute them?"This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

For weeks after Ahmaud Arbery was killed while running down a road in coastal southern Georgia, there were few public developments in the case of a 25-year-old unarmed black man who was shot while being pursued by two white men with weapons in February.Then a graphic video of the shooting surfaced online, spurring widespread outrage.Within days, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation had taken over the case. The video was criticized by celebrities and politicians alike, including President Donald Trump, who called the footage "very, very disturbing," and former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, who said Arbery had essentially been "lynched before our very eyes."And in a major turn, the authorities announced Thursday night that they had arrested two suspects in the case and charged them with murder and aggravated assault.The video -- which by Friday officials had described as "a very important piece" of evidence in moving forward with criminal charges -- was first posted by WGIG, a radio station in Brunswick, Georgia, which said it had obtained the footage from an anonymous source.But in a twist emblematic of the small-town politics that have defined the case, that source turned out to be a criminal defense lawyer in town who had informally consulted with the suspects.The lawyer, Alan Tucker, said in an interview Friday that the video had come from the cellphone of a man who had filmed the episode and that he later gave the footage to the radio station. Tucker's role was confirmed by Scott Ryfun, who oversees the station's programming.Asked why he had leaked the video, Tucker said he had wanted to dispel rumors that he said had fueled tension in the community. "It wasn't two men with a Confederate flag in the back of a truck going down the road and shooting a jogger in the back," Tucker said."It got the truth out there as to what you could see," he added. "My purpose was not to exonerate them or convict them."The video, taken from inside a vehicle, shows Arbery running when he comes upon a white truck, with one man standing next to its open driver's-side door and another in the bed of the pickup. Arbery runs around the truck and disappears briefly from view. Then the man standing outside the truck tussles with him, and three gunshots are heard.The authorities identified Travis McMichael, 34, as the person who shot Arbery. His father, Gregory McMichael, 64, a retired investigator at the local district attorney's office, was also charged.Before the charges were filed this week, two prosecutors had recused themselves from handling the case, citing professional ties to Gregory McMichael. Tucker, too, said he had been an acquaintance of McMichael's from their work in legal circles.Reports suggest Tucker had consulted with the McMichael family in some capacity during the investigation, although it is not clear to what extent. Reached by The Washington Post before his arrest Thursday, Gregory McMichael referred questions to Tucker.Tucker declined to comment on his conversations with the McMichaels on Friday, citing attorney-client privilege."I'm not going to tell you what I told them or what they told me," he said, using profanity to say that any conversations -- had they occurred, he said -- were none of the public's business.At times during the interview, a woman could be heard in the background whispering suggested answers to Tucker.By Friday afternoon, Tucker said that it had been decided that he would not be retained as the lawyer for either of the McMichaels, and it was unclear who was representing them.Tucker said he would not be representing anyone else involved in the case, as the authorities announced Friday that they were pursuing a number of leads, including investigating the man who took the video.The man, Roddie Bryan, lives in the neighborhood. He had shared the video with the police before sharing it with Tucker and was cooperating with the authorities, his lawyer, Kevin Gough, said in an interview Friday evening."Mr. Bryan has never tried to hide anything from anybody," Gough said. "If anybody wanted a copy of the video, he would give it to them."But he said the added attention, including the scrutiny from the authorities, had come as a shock to his client, a mechanic who had since lost his job and received threats. "The atmosphere down here is very volatile," Gough said. "People are in fear. That's all a result of the last few days."The latest developments in the case on Friday fell on Arbery's birthday, when he would have turned 26. Thousands of people commemorated the occasion by running 2.23 miles, a nod to Feb. 23, the date he was killed.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

With New York’s glitziest fashion event in lockdown, people rose to the occasion on social media

• Coronavirus latest: at a glance

The annual Met Gala would have taken place in New York last week, had it not been postponed indefinitely in March owing to the pandemic. The theme would have been About Time: Fashion and Duration, or “time itself”, according to Andrew Bolton, the curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s partner exhibition, which is ironic now that a morning can feel like a month, and a week can feel like a minute.

Ordinarily, it is one of my favourite celebrity bashes, sitting happily in the middle of a ridiculous/gorgeous Venn diagram, showing off high fashion so high that the people who point at Picassos and say “my five-year-old could have done that” will inevitably comment that “you couldn’t wear that down the shops”, as if the point of a ballgown in the shape of a chandelier were to make the trip to Tesco a bit more lively. (Having said that, you could definitely have used it to carry a few extra bags home.)

The tech giant has often been accused of mistreating workers, but our desire for instant gratification is part of the problem

Tim Bray resigned as an Amazon vice-president last week. “Who he?” I hear you say. And why is this news significant? Answers: first, Bray is an ubergeek who’s an alumnus of many of the outfits in tech’s hall of fame (including DEC, Sun Microsystems, the OED project at the University of Waterloo, Google’s Android team and, eventually, Amazon Web Services); and second, he resigned on an issue of principle – something as rare as hen’s teeth in the tech industry.

In his blog, he wrote: “I quit in dismay at Amazon firing whistleblowers who were making noise about warehouse employees frightened of Covid-19.” It was an expensive decision. Bray said the decision to resign would probably cost him more than a million dollars in salary and shares, and that he regretted leaving a job he enjoyed, working with good colleagues. “So I’m pretty blue.”

Excellent film-maker that he is, Watiti seems to fit the Marvel blueprint far more easily than he does Star Wars’ more venerable, old-school template

When entertainment reporters play Hollywood roulette, the practice of attaching directors and stars to forthcoming movies based on little more than rumour, their little white balls nearly always seem to land on Taika Waititi’s number. If you’ve been keeping a close eye on this column over the past year, you’ve probably spotted the white-hot Kiwi director being touted for a remake of Flash Gordon and the next Deadpool movie among other projects, neither of which have yet come to fruition.

Waititi’s next film, according to reports this week, will be a Star Wars episode. Will he end up making it to the first day of production on this one? The chances seem better, as Disney has officially confirmed the appointment via the space saga’s official website, with 1917 co-writer Krysty Wilson-Cairns helping deliver a script. But this is Star Wars we are talking about – Colin Trevorrow, Josh Trank, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, David Benioff and DB Weiss are among the numerous film-makers who have cheerily signed up to try to bring back the glory days of the long-running series in recent times, only to ultimately fall foul of Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy’s merciless Force choke.

Julia Garner excels as a junior assistant to a predatory media mogul boss in Kitty Green’s powerfully understated #MeToo drama

A performance of few words but immense physical eloquence by Julia Garner anchors this impressively chilling #MeToo-era drama about workplace harassment and abuse. Following a day in the life of a young woman with dreams of making her mark in the film and television industry, it’s a sobering portrait of a dirty little secret that was brought into the news spotlight by the Harvey Weinstein scandal. All the more powerful for its understated tone, this low-key piece packs a hefty punch as it exposes the web of silence that enabled a very modern horror story.

Garner (who won an Emmy for her work on TV’s Ozark) is Jane, a high-achieving college graduate who finds herself on the bottom rung of the ladder as a junior assistant to an unnamed entertainment mogul in New York. The appointment may hold promises of great opportunities ahead, but for now it’s fairly soul destroying. An opening sequence, played out to the lonely strains of Tamar-kali’s sparse score, finds Jane being driven to the office before dawn, turning on the lights above her colleagues’ desks – first in, last out. Her tasks are menial yet weirdly demanding: making coffee, changing the paper in the photocopier, ordering lunch, and arranging travel and accommodation for an ever-changing roster of offhand executives and needy clients.

The I, Daniel Blake star on her parents’ generosity, working in a call centre and her love of ice-cream

Born in London, Squires, 32, studied at Rose Bruford College in London. She starred in the Ken Loach film, I, Daniel Blake in 2016, earning a Bafta nomination and winning most promising newcomer at the British Independent Film awards. Her West End debut in Cat On A Hot Tin Roof followed in 2017. Her television work includes The Miniaturist and Collateral; in the autumn she will play the lead in the Channel 4 drama, Adult Material.

What is your greatest fear?
Snakes.

She’s acted, modelled, worked with Kanye West and Drake. But the Black-ish star didn’t dare follow her mother, Diana Ross – until now

There is a strange noise coming from Tracee Ellis Ross’s Los Angeles garden. Hang on, she says, looking away from her computer screen to the window with an alarmed expression. “I’m just going to go check that out. Stand by!”

If this were a horror movie, then the stylish woman disappearing into the distance would never come back. But it isn’t a horror movie, it’s a Zoom interview, and Ross, a Golden Globe-winning actor best known for her role in the US sitcom Black-ish, is talking to me from the sunny living room of her home. Or at least she was; right now, I’m staring at a fiddle-leaf fig tree and a comfortable-looking couch.

Staff of the magazine that kicked off the French New Wave say its new elite owners pose a threat to editorial independence

The mass resignation of the staff of Cahiers du Cinéma, the film journal that launched the French New Wave, has reignited debate in France about the possibility of critical independence in a society whose major stakeholders frequently operate in several spheres.

On Thursday, the 15 staff writers and editors announced their resignation, saying they believed its new owners posed a threat to the magazine’s cherished independence.

A princess seeking revenge after her royal privileges are revoked? A drifter trying to get away from her awful father? Or maybe a guardian of Captain Britain?

Now that Meghan Markle has had her royal purse strings cut, the time has come for her to prove that she is capable of making a living on her own merits. And, ever the everywoman, it has been reported that Markle’s first step is exactly the same one that we’d all make upon finding ourselves suddenly short of money – she has instructed her agent to find her a role in a superhero film.

At this point it’s best to assume that she’s looking for something more substantial than her pre-royal movie career offered; she won’t want a made-for-TV superhero movie, or to appear in a single scene of a larger film as a nameless woman whose only purpose in the universe is to give the middle-aged leading man something to absent-mindedly flirt at. So, who should she play? Luckily, as crowded as the superhero genre currently is, there is still plenty of untapped potential for her. Here are my suggestions.

The actor said wearing a fat suit for the 2001 movie taught her what it is like to be humiliated as an obese person. Why are TV and film characters so rarely treated with dignity and respect?

‘Disaster” is how Gwyneth Paltrow has summed up her role in the 2001 film Shallow Hal, which will surprise few people who have actually seen it. Jack Black plays Hal, a man so shallow he has to be hypnotised in order to date a fat woman, who, through his boggled eyes, he sees as a very thin woman.

The nastiness of Shallow Hal, which has long appalled critics and fans alike, was front and centre in the trailer, where Hal’s friend attempts to “rescue” him from speaking to a fat woman, Rosemary, who is, in fact, willowy Paltrow dressed in a fat suit. But because he cannot see what she looks like, he falls for her “inner beauty”. It is an uncomfortable mix – a film that pretends to preach body acceptance while simultaneously inviting laughter at bodies that don’t fit into jeans size six and under. Take the scene where she is called a “rhino”, or the one where she cannonballs into a swimming pool causing a tidal wave. The message built into the script’s DNA is simple: fat is funny; it is OK to laugh at fat people.

From his fateful game of chess to a moving turn in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Von Sydow was the last standard bearer of Bergman’s high-minded movie idiom

•Max von Sydow dies aged 90
•A life in pictures

The opening of the seventh seal in the Book of Revelation, disclosing the truth of God’s existence and the second coming, will result in a mysterious silence in the kingdom of heaven – then the sound of trumpets and the thunderous uproar of Earth’s apocalyptic ending. In the movies, no actor has ever represented these ideas more seriously, nor shown humanity’s anguish in the face of God’s implacable silence or unassuageable anger more clearly, than Max von Sydow. He was virtually a book of revelation in himself.

The passionate severity of Von Sydow – and his ability to impersonate the ascetic nobility of some impossibly remote priestly or knightly order but with very human flaws – formed the bedrock of Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and the staggering series of films he was to make with Bergman in the 1950s and 1960s. Beyond that, he virtually epitomised an entire, distinctively high-minded attitude to cinematic art in Europe. His films for Bergman were composed in a movie idiom that drew on Ibsen and Strindberg, Sjöström and Dreyer – and of which, since Bergman’s death in 2007, Von Sydow could be said to be the final standard bearer.

Despite having made 130 more films – including six Tarantinos – Jackson trails king of the curse word Hill. But then he wasn’t in The Wolf of Wall Street …

With the movie industry shut down due to coronavirus, now is a valuable time for us to look back and properly examine the attraction that we have to certain figures. Are we drawn to Tom Hanks because he exudes a sense of benevolent paternalism that we tend to find subconsciously appealing? Do we flock to Marvel films because we seek the clarity of a good-v-evil dynamic in a world where those are becoming increasingly opaque?

And why do people go and see Jonah Hill films? Seriously, why?

SBS On Demand is streaming more than 10 hours of his features. Our isolated film critic took the bait and watched them all

Many terrible things are discussed in the maelstrom of mayhem and misery I call my inbox – terrible, terrible things, such as requests involving me needing to go somewhere, or speak to someone or do something.

But last Thursday afternoon a lovely email broke through like a ray of sunshine piercing grey clouds on a stormy day. It was an email from a publicist at SBS. The subject line read: “Binge 627 minutes of ADAM DRIVER for free.”

In the wake of Covid-19, We Are One: A Global Film Festival is taking the experience online. But cinema is a bigger encounter

Every year, at Cannes (and other festivals) there’s a plaintive argument about what Cannes (or other festivals) are really all “about”. Some Savonarola-type person will dash the glass of rosé out of your hand, throw your canape into the Med and tell you Cannes is not about red-carpet narcissism, not about stars preening in the flashbulb glare of celeb-worship, not about L’Oréal sponsorship, not about getting drunk at a million late-night parties. It’s about the movies, about cinema itself.

Of course. And that’s what the new Covid-19-related We Are One: A Global Film Festival appears to offer: the 10-day online festival, beginning 29 May, curated by Jane Rosenthal of the Tribeca film festival, featuring arthouse films (though not the big-ticket Hollywood items) from Cannes, Venice, Berlin and many more, streaming for free in return for an optional donation to the World Health Organization’s Covid-19 fund. So there you have it. A festival with all the frills and extras and flummeries stripped away. Just you, in your bedroom, with your laptop, communing with cinema. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

With cinemas closed and major titles delaying their release, the Academy has changed its rules to welcome some streaming titles. Will they regret it?

‘What about the Oscars?” might not be the question at the top of your mind as you consider the manifold uncertainties raised by the coronavirus pandemic. A Hollywood awards ceremony scheduled for the end of February 2021, one might think, has fewer immediate concerns than most cultural institutions do right now. Yet panic has been rising within the Academy: the show itself may go on, but with cinemas closed for the foreseeable future and dozens of major titles either rescheduling or indefinitely delaying their release dates, will it have have enough standout films to celebrate?

For some weeks now, the joke around the industry has been that Leigh Whannell’s hit psychothriller The Invisible Man – one of the few popular and critical successes to be released in the year’s early months – may as well collect its gongs now. But a crucial rule change announced on Tuesday by Academy CEO Dawn Hudson and president David Rubin has ensured that it will face some competition after all, even if its rivals never see the inside of a cinema.

The Oscar-winning sword-and-sandals Russell Crowe vehicle refreshed old cliches, before ushering in a spate of copycats

“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” the creepy pilot asks the small boy in Airplane!. To younger audiences, the joke no longer makes any sense. In Airplane!’s day, sword-and-sandals movies had become an outdated, unwittingly homoerotic joke. But then came Gladiator, and the joke was on us. Released 20 years ago this month, Ridley Scott’s Roman epic gave the old cliches a new lease of life. It was all here: Colosseum action! Rippling man-flesh! Tigers! But Gladiator had its cheesecake and ate it. It served up crowd-pleasing spectacle and airline-ad visuals but also solemn, Oscar-worthy drama (and, in retrospect, a fair degree of camp).

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Ed Pilkington looks ahead to Weinstein’s court battle where he faces charges of rape and sexual assault, which he denies. And Jamie Grierson on why counter-terror police have listed Extinction Rebellion as a ‘key threat’

The film producer Harvey Weinstein will stand trial this week in New York City accused of five charges, including rape and sexual assault. Weinstein denies all allegations. The trial, expected to last about six weeks, will focus on the witness accounts of two alleged victims who claim they were assaulted by Weinstein.

The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington has been in court for the jury selection process in which 2,000 potential jurors were whittled down to 12 who will decide Weinstein’s fate. He tells Anushka Asthana that the case will cause a sensation in the US and around the world, but that it should not be seen as #MeToo on trial.

Like dozens of women in the entertainment industry, the actor, model and writer Zoë Brock has claimed she had a traumatic encounter with the film producer Harvey Weinstein. Now she is faced with a settlement offer that she believes would allow him to escape blame for the alleged assaults. Also today: Lily Kuo on the spread of the deadly coronavirus in China

The actor, model and writer Zoë Brock was on a retreat in the New Zealand bush in 2017 when an email pinged into her inbox. It was from a friend sending a link to a breaking news story of allegations against Harvey Weinstein. The claims from several women against the film producer were eerily familiar to an incident that Brock alleges happened to her.

This week, Weinstein goes on trial charged with rape and sexual assault. But for dozens of women with claims against him, their only recourse is to civil courts. Brock tells Anushka Asthana that while she is part of the class action suit against Weinstein, she is deeply unhappy with the terms of the proposed settlement, which she believes would allow him to accept no blame for the allegations.

Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend and star of Spartacus, has died aged 103. Douglas was nominated for three Oscars and his extensive filmography includes Paths of Glory, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Lust for Life. The Hollywood legend's death was announced by his son, fellow actor Michael Douglas

• Kirk Douglas, Hollywood legend and star of Spartacus, dies aged 103

Following a strikingly white and male list of Bafta nominees, this year’s Academy Awards shortlists are barely more diverse. It’s a chronic problem in an industry running out of excuses for its slow pace of change. Lanre Bakare examines why the Oscars are still so white. Plus: Joan E Greve on a hectic week of US politics

When the lists of nominees for the major film awards in 2020 were announced, there was, once again, a glaring anomaly. Not a single person of colour was nominated in the Bafta acting categories, while the Oscars managed only Cynthia Erivo for her part in Harriet.

It is an issue that the industry is well aware of: in 2015, the ceremony saw #OscarsSoWhite trending on Twitter, while actors such as Eddie Murphy were rebuking the academy from the stage back in the 1990s. So what explains the glacial pace of change? Guardian arts and culture correspondent Lanre Bakare tells Anushka Asthana that there have been plenty of false dawns over the years in the quest for greater diversity.

Donald Trump takes a jab at the South Korean film Parasite, best picture at this year's Oscars, telling supporters in Colorado that the US has 'enough problems with South Korea', and: ‘Can we get Gone With the Wind back?’ He also dismisses Brad Pitt, who – during his Oscars speech said his 45-second slot was more than John Bolton received at the US president's Senate impeachment trial. Trump calls the actor a 'little wise guy'

• Parasite's best picture Oscar could kickstart a new era of internationalism
  

Have you ever noticed that in film and on TV, period dramas tend to have almost entirely white casts? It’s almost as if, at least in film and TV land, black people do not feature in British history at all. The Guardian’s Josh Toussaint-Strauss finds out how accurate costume dramas are in terms of racial diversity, and looks into the reasons why period dramas might get whitewashed

Wagner Moura and Ana de Armas give strong performances in a mostly effective retelling of the life and tragic death of a celebrated Brazilian diplomat

There’s an old school charm to Sergio, documentarian Greg Barker’s narrative portrait of UN diplomat Sérgio Vieira de Mello, a dramatic retelling of a life he already brought to the screen in a 2009 documentary of the same name. Barker’s knowledge of Sérgio’s life and accomplishments is backgrounded by a clear respect for who he was and so while the film is factually detailed, as one would expect, it’s also rooted in a desire to showcase his humanity, both in and out of work, with Barker deciding to lean into full-tilt romantic tragedy, perhaps also as a way of differentiating his two Sergios.

Related: Love Wedding Repeat review – laboured Netflix romcom farce

This uncanny story of preppy drug dealers has a touch of Heathers and a bit of Bret Easton Ellis, and an intriguing take on what high school is really like

Tayarisha Poe, like her partial namesake, has a gift for the uncanny. She is the photographer and film-maker behind this feature debut, which began as an online multimedia project and was developed as a conventional movie through the Sundance screenwriters and directors labs. What has emerged is an intriguing, opaque, tonally elusive story that seems weirdly unfinished. It is set in a privileged high school – a world of ivy-covered stone buildings and shady quadrangles where rich kids are separated into malign and mutually hostile cliques. It has a touch of Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis, a hint of Heathers and a bit of the elegant, disdainful satire of Dear White People.

Somehow, though, it is odder, more stylised and contrived, always holding out the possibility that it is set in the future, or in an alternative present on some other planet, or inside the head of one of its characters who is having a disturbing dream – the kind that ends just as it is about to give up its meaning. Right until the closing credits, I half-expected the face of each person on screen to flip upwards, revealing a Stepford-like set of dials.

An affectionate and absorbing documentary from film-maker Rachel Mason about her devout parents, who ran a famous adult bookstore in early-80s LA

Here is a documentary with an absorbing and unexpectedly complicated story to tell, whose paradoxes and sadnesses are not entirely resolved by the end. Artist and film-maker Rachel Mason has created an affectionate portrait of her elderly parents, Karen and Barry, who in many ways are like one of the (fictional) old couples in When Harry Met Sally.

Karen is a former journalist, devoutly Jewish, and Barry is a former special visual effects engineer who worked on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 and invented a modification for kidney dialysis machines. But they found themselves in a tough financial spot in the early 1980s and took over Circus of Books, a gay porn bookstore in Los Angeles that also sold movies called things like Confessions of a Two Dick Slut and Don’t Drop the Soap, and was one of Larry Flynt’s first distribution points. Under their shrewd management, the store boomed, opened another branch and became a well-known meeting place for LGBT people, while all the time, the Masons were a conventional family who kept their three children well away from the business. Karen movingly – and honestly – recounts how upset she was to discover that one of her sons was gay: the business and family life were that separate.