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How years of research built Grand Theft Auto VI’s obsessively detailed world

The developers behind its virtual Florida share how they built their most ambitious world so far • Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here In 2015, a group of Grand Theft Auto developers from Rockstar North took their first trips to Miami to do field research for the next game in the phenomenally popular crime series. “Before you’re doing hyper-organised research trips, you’re immersing yourself in the place and its history, the vibe of it,” Rob Nelson, one of the lead developers on GTA VI, tells me. “[You see] the physical places you want to move characters through, th

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Caryl Churchill’s magnificent Cloud 9 reaches for the skies – the National Theatre has done it proud

National Theatre, London The experimental 1979 drama gleefully muddles roles in a century-spanning caper that bounces from colonial Africa to hippy London Caryl Churchill’s time-hopping 1979 drama is not revived as often as it might be, perhaps because it is so magnificently madcap. Bouncing from a first act satirising Victorian life in colonial Africa to a second act exploring sexual liberation in 1970s London, it could easily roll off-kilter in the wrong hands. There is also its complicated framework. Cloud 9 is a play in two distinct parts which follows some of the characters a century on,

The Guardian
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Entertainment

‘Like having your brain squeezed’: Succession’s Jesse Armstrong and more on the rollercoaster of TV writers’ rooms

As co-writer of new thriller Hunting Alice Bell, our film critic entered the hallowed Room – and was struck by its support, buzz, abrasion and chocolate snacks. He asks legendary showrunners about their experience ‘Write, write, write until your fingers break!” That was Chekhov’s advice to writers. Until I started writing for television I thought I understood what he meant. I thought I knew what writing was: the solitude, the making yourself do it, the finger-shattering pain of doing it seriously, on your own. As well as being chief film critic for the Guardian, I have written fiction and in s

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Prima Facie review – Cynthia Erivo’s brilliant barrister blazes in sexual assault drama

Adaptation of the international stage hit stars a commanding Erivo as Tessa, whose career defending rape suspects is undermined by experience A blazingly fierce, effortlessly commanding central performance from Cynthia Erivo, like something from classical drama, powers this movie adaptation of Suzie Miller’s international stage hit (which starred Sheridan Harbridge in the original Australian production, and then Jodie Comer in London’s West End). Miller has written the screenplay, with Susanna White directing. In the theatre, it is a bravura solo spectacle, a stream-of-consciousness torrent wh

The Guardian
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Entertainment

David Walliams: Power and Silence review – some of this footage will make your head spin

From the visceral accounts of those the comedian allegedly groomed to archive footage of Jonathan Ross joking about him taking 15-year-olds home, this is dizzying TV David Walliams and his lawyers fought to the last to keep secret the results of a three-year investigation by ITV and the Guardian into claims by multiple women of the comedian and author’s predatory behaviour dating back decades, but those attempts failed and now they have been laid bare before the public. Accompanying the Guardian’s reports, an hour-long documentary has been released – first on YouTube and now on ITVX. It largel

The Guardian
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Entertainment

NAZA documentary on Gaza killings becomes one of year’s most watched

The film, which details Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian civilians, has been seen by more than 1.5m people in less than two months NAZA, the award-winning documentary that details Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza, has been seen by more than 1.5 million people since being released in cinemas across the world last month. The film, which is directed by the Oscar-winning Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor and produced by the Guardian, has reached a worldwide audience of 1,547,033 as of Friday 6 November, making it one of the most-watched documentary films with a theatr

The Guardian
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Entertainment

Jonathan Ross ‘horrified’ by David Walliams and Russell Brand revelations

TV presenter says he was ‘genuinely unaware’ of pair’s conduct despite joking about Walliams going home with 15-year-old girl in 2004 Read the full investigation: ‘It wasn’t long until he asked me if I’d ever had sex before’ Explainer: the key legal issues surrounding the case The TV presenter Jonathan Ross has said he is “as horrified by the revelations about David Walliams and the crimes of Russell Brand as the rest of the nation”, adding that he was “genuinely unaware of their conduct” despite making a joke about a 15-year-old “going home” with Walliams at the British Comedy Awards in 2004.

The Guardian
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