Culture

November 24th-29th: Including Ballroom Blitz, an all-new female Matlock, and The Making of Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Movie of smash-hit musical Wicked is well-cast and spectacular. Plus moving and evocative Irish documentary Housewife of the Year, solid IVF drama Joy, and fascinating feminist doc Witches

Gladiator II star said meeting the English king at the film’s British premiere was ‘not on the list of priorities’

Featuring Sabaa Tahir’s Heir; Silver by Olivia Levez; When It’s Your Turn For Midnight by Blessing Musariri; Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar; and Darkly by Marisha Pessl

Drummer Benante discusses how the music industry rips off bands, rumours of a new Anthrax album and his love for U2

Self-made billionaire’s story is in many ways an American fable - of a working-class girl who climbs her way to the top, then falls, only to rise again

How to Re-Assemble an Atomic Bomb features 10 tracks from the recording sessions that made some of the band wonder if they’d have anything to release

In Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s new film, the star plays a woman crushed by childrearing. It’s not the only pressure women are under, she says

The author on writing stories with ‘emotional punch’ for children, walking in to a bomb during the Troubles, and his less-than-flattering opinion of writers as people

This comprehensive and wonderfully written book serves to remind us of how much outstanding Irish theatre has been produced in the past quarter-century

November 23rd-29th: The best movies, music, art and more coming your way this week

A new work by Maura Dooley

Haruki Murakami expands on a 1980 novella in a book that evokes the spirit of the late Columbian Nobel Prize winner

Couple say they will reopen Phoenix cinema where actor went to see films as a young boy while on holiday in Co Kerry

Books newsletter: A preview of Saturday’s pages; Richard Flanagan wins Baillie Gifford Prize; Irish translator wins Stephen Spender Prize; MS Readathon; (S)worn State(s) launch at MoLI; Never Too Late Award; Dublin Literary Award judges; Limerick Writers’ Centre launch; Rory Brennan dies

Theatre: Staged in a vintage Ulsterbus, Raphaël Amahl Khouri’s high-concept play chronicles Creith’s difficult transition as she found her true self

Irish actors Jack Reynor and Sam Keeley met before being cast in Lenny Abrahamson’s What Richard Did and remain very close, to the point that Keeley was recently best man at Reynor’s wedding

Radio: When the RTÉ host talks to Pat and Aisling Ryan, it’s an intriguing glimpse into an unseen and unglamorous yet vital industry

The novelist Maggie O’Farrell on leaving Ireland, growing up in Britain, life as a child with a stammer and her new book

As part of Irish Times Food Month, 10 delectable questions to satisfy every cinema-going gourmet

Masayoshi Son is at centre of Barber’s dizzying tour of tech bro billionaire boom-and-bust culture

Television: The podcaster and author taps into the sense of haunting weirdness that runs through Irish history

Irish acts Fontaines DC and CMAT will headline the three-day festival in Waterford’s Curraghmore Estate

Television: The only reason the series exists is to cash in on nostalgia for the original camp masterpiece

Love Island star Higgins ‘absolutely petrified’ of eating challenges and has ‘never slept outside before’