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Slash, Lennon and Mercury Memorabilia on Offer at Propstore Music Auction

John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (AFP)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (AFP)
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Slash, Lennon and Mercury Memorabilia on Offer at Propstore Music Auction

John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (AFP)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono. (AFP)

From Slash's guitar to ‌a poster John Lennon signed hours before he was killed, items from music history hit the auction block next week in a sale valued at 1.5 million pounds ($2 million).

More than 400 lots are being offered in Propstore's Music Memorabilia Live Auction on April 30, including costumes, instruments and photos among other items.

Leading the sale is Guns N' Roses lead guitarist Slash's stage-used and autographed Gibson Les Paul '59 Custom Shop guitar, which he played during the band's "Not In This Lifetime... Tour". It has ‌a price ‌estimate of 150,000 pounds to 300,000 pounds ($405,210).

A promotional ‌poster ⁠for John Lennon ⁠and Yoko Ono's final collaborative album "Double Fantasy", signed by the former Beatle on December 8, 1980 - the day he was shot dead - is priced at 60,000-120,000 pounds.

Sold with audio proof, Propstore said it was one of only four items Lennon signed that day, hours before being shot at the entrance of ⁠the Dakota, his apartment building in New ‌York.

"The poster itself is super ‌rare because it was only available with promotional copies of the ‌album... and he gave each of these to the crew ‌who were interviewing him, RKO Radio," Mark Hochman, head of the music department at Propstore, said at a press preview on Wednesday.

A Shure 565 SD award gold microphone presented to Queen and used ‌by frontman Freddie Mercury is also listed, with an estimate of 30,000-60,000 pounds.

It is being ⁠sold by ⁠former Queen roadie Peter Hince, who was gifted the microphone by Mercury. Hince is also selling other Queen items, including a tambourine used by Mercury and a limited-edition blue vinyl pressing of the band's hit song "Bohemian Rhapsody".

“These are things that I got during my time with the band. I don't collect but I know there are people who'll be over the moon to get these things," Hince said.

Other items offered in Propstore's auction include a leather jacket worn by late singer George Michael in the "Faith" music video and a jacket worn by late rapper The Notorious B.I.G.

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Entertainment

Martin McDonagh’s 'Wild Horse Nine' Hits Venice Film Festival with a Dark CIA Tale

Actors John Malkovich (R) and Sam Rockwell (L) with director Martin McDonagh (C) arrive at the Lido Beach for the Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, 03 September 2026. (EPA)
Actors John Malkovich (R) and Sam Rockwell (L) with director Martin McDonagh (C) arrive at the Lido Beach for the Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, 03 September 2026. (EPA)
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Martin McDonagh’s 'Wild Horse Nine' Hits Venice Film Festival with a Dark CIA Tale

Actors John Malkovich (R) and Sam Rockwell (L) with director Martin McDonagh (C) arrive at the Lido Beach for the Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, 03 September 2026. (EPA)
Actors John Malkovich (R) and Sam Rockwell (L) with director Martin McDonagh (C) arrive at the Lido Beach for the Venice International Film Festival, in Venice, Italy, 03 September 2026. (EPA)

Martin McDonagh had written a few versions of his new film “Wild Horse Nine,” which receives its world premiere on Thursday at the Venice Film Festival, before he homed in on the CIA and the 1973 military coup in Chile.

One was about a father and son, another was about two actors. But nothing was quite working until he started thinking about the historical event that had fascinated him since he was a teenager.

“I realized then that the story could be about one of the guys experiencing guilt and regret over all these things he’s done,” the British-Irish filmmaker said. “It took it away from being a simple comedy to something much deeper and sadder.”

“Wild Horse Nine,” which stars Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as a pair of CIA agents on a trip to Easter Island shortly before the 1973 coup, is one of the most anticipated movies at the festival where it’s in competition for the Golden Lion. It will have a theatrical release later this year and, if McDonagh’s track record is any indication, might be an awards player.

McDonagh's previous two films, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” and “The Banshees of Inisherin” both bowed at Venice and went on to receive multiple Oscar nominations, including best picture. “Three Billboards” won two, for Rockwell and Frances McDormand.

When someone suggested that “Wild Horse Nine” might be Malkovich’s ticket to an Oscar win after two nominations, he said, “the nicest thing is that the film gets attention.”

“I’ve had a long career, and I’ve had really spectacular collaborators and collaborations,” Malkovich said. “So I never feel in competition with any of them because generally I love what they do.”

McDonagh had pursued Malkovich for previous films, but he’d always had prior commitments. The actor said he wanted to make sure he would be available for this one.

“It’s a film that, with great humor, addresses two very traumatic occurrences — the death of John F. Kennedy and Chilean coup — with grace and intelligence and a kind of fairness,” Malkovich said.

“Wild Horse Nine” is one of the few Hollywood films to have been made on Easter Island, where they had to transport cameras and period-specific cars. Parker Posey, who plays Rockwell’s wife, even flew in to do off-camera phone scenes.

“What a mystical place,” said Posey, who also appears on camera as well.

Another newcomer to McDonagh’s world was Steve Buscemi, who said he “practically stalked” McDonagh at the Venice Film Festival a few years ago to tell him, “you have to work with me right?”

McDonagh said that it’s one of the best film experiences he’s ever had.

At the heart of the film is the complicated relationship between Rockwell’s Lee and Malkovich’s Chris, who seems increasingly agitated, prickly and forgetful, bogged down by the weight of the historical events he’s covertly had a hand in.

McDonagh wanted to make a pointed film about the CIA and the “awful things they’ve done all around the world,” he said.

“We know what the KGB are like but we probably don’t question the CIA as much as we ought to,” McDonagh said. “I’m always questioning, even in the less political films, I like to question authority or what we’re told.”

The film was meant to be a historical piece about the 1973 Chilean coup, and yet McDonagh has been struck by the tentacles and connections to current events, like the US capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

“They don’t seem to be making it covert anymore,” McDonagh said. “It just feels like things are getting stupider, and stupider and stupider.”

He added: “Watching it now, it does seem to have a sort of commentary on present day geopolitics. It’s going to be fascinating to see how an audience takes it.”

Entertainment

Venice Documentary Turns Everest Dream into Story of Loss

Jim Morrison poses during a photocall for the movie "Everest: The Other Side" at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 3, 2026. (Reuters)
Jim Morrison poses during a photocall for the movie "Everest: The Other Side" at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 3, 2026. (Reuters)
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Venice Documentary Turns Everest Dream into Story of Loss

Jim Morrison poses during a photocall for the movie "Everest: The Other Side" at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 3, 2026. (Reuters)
Jim Morrison poses during a photocall for the movie "Everest: The Other Side" at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival in Venice, Italy, September 3, 2026. (Reuters)

A documentary about two elite mountaineers pursuing an apparently impossible dream became a study of grief and resilience after tragedy struck during production, its directors said at the Venice Film Festival on Thursday.

"Everest: The Other Side" began as the story of ski mountaineers Jim Morrison and Hilaree Nelson and their ambition to climb and ski down Everest's direct North Face, a forbidding route few climbers have ever completed and no-one has skied.

But the National Geographic documentary took a catastrophic turn after Nelson died in 2022 while skiing down Nepal's Mount Manaslu -- a scene captured on film.

"It started as a love story ‌between Jim and ‌Hilaree and their dreams of climbing and skiing the Direct ‌North ⁠Face. We never could ⁠have anticipated the tragedy that ensued," co-director Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi told reporters.

UNPRECEDENTED MOUNTAIN VIEWS

The film follows Morrison as he confronts the loss of his partner and decides whether to continue their dream alone.

His journey is given added pathos by the fact his life was already scarred by tragedy, with his wife and their two young children dying in a 2011 plane crash.

"For me, the film really looks at this question through Jim's eyes of how ⁠you can move through grief," Vasarhelyi said. "How do you ‌learn to live with grief? How does that ‌grief inform a life of intention?"

Morrison said the mountains that had shaped his life also helped him ‌cope with repeated personal losses.

"I've suffered a lot of loss in my life ‌and the mountains have provided a lot back to me," he said. "My craft is putting one foot in front of another and taking one day at a time."

The film is directed by Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin, the Oscar-winning duo behind the climbing documentary "Free Solo".

Chin, who accompanied Morrison ‌on the Everest mission, said the new project sought not only to capture an unprecedented mountaineering feat but also the emotional and ⁠practical decisions made in ⁠one of earth's most hostile environments.

"No one's ever seen mountaineering like this," Vasarhelyi said, referring to footage shot on Everest's remote North Face.

Chin described the challenge of filming an expedition where climbers and camera operators were operating at nearly 9,000 meters (29,500 ft).

"The team was made up of world-class athletes and climbers who could also shoot," he said. "You have to be climbers first."

The directors also highlighted the role of the Sherpa climbers who formed part of the expedition team, saying a new generation was increasingly pursuing its own ambitions rather than simply supporting Western expeditions.

For Chin, however, the film's deeper message lies beyond mountaineering.

"When you face your mortality on a fairly regular basis, it is about looking at your life through the lens of the inevitable," he said. "It can shape the way that you decide to live."

The film is being shown out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until September 12.

Entertainment

Movie Review: Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds Star in Irreverent Cold War Action-Comedy ‘Mayday’

This image released by Apple TV shows Kenneth Branagh, left, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from "Mayday." (Apple TV via AP)
This image released by Apple TV shows Kenneth Branagh, left, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from "Mayday." (Apple TV via AP)
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Movie Review: Kenneth Branagh and Ryan Reynolds Star in Irreverent Cold War Action-Comedy ‘Mayday’

This image released by Apple TV shows Kenneth Branagh, left, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from "Mayday." (Apple TV via AP)
This image released by Apple TV shows Kenneth Branagh, left, and Ryan Reynolds in a scene from "Mayday." (Apple TV via AP)

Somewhere along the way, Sir Kenneth Branagh developed a knack for playing Russians. He was the vindictive oligarch in “Tenet” and a villainous industrialist in “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” but “Mayday” may be the first time he’s been asked to use his very particular set of language skills for ... comedy?

His character, Nikolai Ustinov is a United States-loving, ex-KGB agent who has been living a solitary life in the woods until a U.S. Navy pilot crash lands in his backyard.

The year is 1987, Tony Scott’s “Top Gun,” released the year prior, looms large for both servicemen and former Russian agents, and Lieutenant Troy “Assassin” Kelly (Ryan Reynolds) has found himself in a very bad situation after being shot down on a black ops mission in a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird in the heart of the Soviet Union.

Nikolai fights like Jason Bourne, has a beard like Grizzly Adams and loves “Top Gun” with every ounce of his being. Somehow, he’s obtained a bootleg VHS of the movie which he has watched “over 100 times,” he tells Troy. That movie, he says, confirmed “all of my beliefs about your people.” Because of that, he takes it upon himself to help Troy get out of Russia — and thus another mismatched buddy action comedy is born.

Troy is a very quintessentially Reynolds character while also being fairly generic: Snarky and sarcastic and full of himself. In classic “Top Gun” fashion he’s sure he’s the best pilot. He also has a hang-up about faces he deems unpleasant including those of the Cabbage Patch Kids, the pilot leading the black ops mission (it’s one you don’t often see outside of nightmares, he tells him to his face) and a Russian child whose guardians have taken them in for the night. His Reynolds-isms really only work when playing against Branagh, however. It’s hard to say whether anyone intended for Branagh to be the real star of this film, or if that’s just what happened, but he is the one with the arc, with the comedy, with the soul. Reynolds is mainly there to react to whatever Branagh is doing.

Filmmakers John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, the directing team behind “Game Night” and “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” have made a career out of making genre fare with an irreverent twist. They seem to be both skeptics and fans of macho 80s action movies — playing up the practical hand-to-hand combat and embracing the inherent goofiness of it all.

It’s hard to shake the feeling that it is a strange time to be releasing a movie with a sense of humor about Russia and geopolitical tensions. “Mayday” has a bigger point to make about the one-sided relationship of patriotism, wherever that loyalty lays. And yet it still seems like poor timing to have Marcin Dorociński playing a KGB officer, Alexander Volkov, who is hunting Troy on behalf of the motherland with the zeal of a Terminator. At one point his colleagues, content to wait for help to retrieve Troy’s boot and dog tag from a very tall tree, watch in awe as Volkov strips down to his undershirt to effortlessly do it himself.

Even so, “Mayday” is still pretty fun within its slick and self-aware packaging. It also doesn’t exactly transport you to a credible 1987, though, no matter how hard the soundtrack and references may be working. But in the end, it knows what it is, and that’s not a serious exploration of anything, least of all individuals being used as political cogs during the Cold War.