As junior doctors who work on acute inpatient psychiatric wards, serious mental illness is our daily reality. We have, therefore, watched the controversies around Todd Phillips’s Joker – in which Joaquin Phoenix plays a troubled loner who turns to violence – with professional interest. The film’s dominance in the debate about portrayals of mental illness in the movies comes at a curious time. Recently, we’ve witnessed great leaps of awareness about relatively common mental-health issues such as depression and anxiety, and with that awareness, increasing dismissal of the sort of unhelpful prejudices that used to surround them.
All this from an island of just three and a half million souls, plus the other five million Puerto Ricans who live in the US. How did they become such a colossal musical force? "Puerto Rico’s relationship with music is everything," says Bad Bunny, AKA 24-year-old Benito Ocasio, who is touring in the UK for the first time this summer and whose tracks regularly score more than 500m YouTube views. "It’s an island full of talent and if you grow up there, you grow up living and breathing music."
The annual Forbes Celebrity 100 list also saw soccer stars Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar among the top 10, along with British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and 1970s soft rock band the Eagles, who embarked on a new tour in 2018. West, the husband of Kim Kardashian, returned to the list after a four-year absence. Forbes estimated his pre-tax earnings at $150m, driven mostly by his popular Yeezy sneaker line, putting him in third place. Kim Kardashian ranked No 26 on the list.
Watching it all from the back of the bus was Stosh Mintek, the 37-year-old chief executive of Ghetto Film School, an immersive high school film program that sponsored the London students’ trip to Los Angeles. G. F. S. , as it is often called, has been around since 2000, when it was established as an after-school summer program in the Bronx aimed at minority students. It has developed into a 30-month curriculum with programs in New York, Los Angeles and London. Fellows receive 1,000 hours of instruction in screenwriting, film production, animation and movie history.
Malek told the Guardian that taking the role was a "kind of the gun-to-the-head moment". "What do you do? … The scariest endeavours that I’ve chosen to take in my life have been the most fulfilling and rewarding. And this has proven to defend that equation." His rise to Oscar glory has been meteoric. Before Bohemian Rhapsody, Malek was best known for the lead role of the hit TV series Mr Robot. As "vigilante hacker" Elliot Alderson who is dealing with a social anxiety disorder, Malek starred alongside Christian Slater and won an Emmy for best actor in a drama series in 2016.