Latest news with #Fairytale
Scottish Sun
26-06-2025
- Sport
- Scottish Sun
Fairytale sprinter Live In The Dream ‘nearly died' and unlikely to race again after serious injury
BAD DREAM Fairytale sprinter Live In The Dream 'nearly died' and unlikely to race again after serious injury FAIRYTALE sprinter Live In The Dream is highly unlikely to race again after suffering a life-threatening injury. The six-year-old spent several weeks in a veterinary hospital this spring and definitely won't see a racecourse this year. 1 Nunthorpe winner Live In The Dream is unlikely to race again Credit: Steve Davies The horse was responsible for one of the most memorable big-race results in recent memory when winning the Nunthorpe Stakes at York. He caused a huge 28-1 shock on the Knavesmire two years ago to give Epsom-based Adam West his first Group 1 win, and then took his trainer and owners on the trip of a lifetime to the Breeders' Cup in America. But he never quite scaled the same heights and missed last year's Nunthorpe with a foot injury, and when West moved his operation to France he was taken out of the yard and sent to Ed Walker. He hadn't been at Walker's yard for long when he became sick, and his condition deteriorated to the point when his owner Steve de'Lemos thought the horse might die. De'Lemos said: "He had a cyst in his stifle joint and needed an operation and was recuperating at Donnington Grove. "He nearly died, he got a really bad infection and one of the vets there Henry O'Neill saved his life, he was superstar. They said a lot of people would have had him put down, but that was never an option, I told him to do everything he could for the horse. "He was in there six or seven weeks, he was on a drip a lot of the time. Sir Gino came and went while he was in there, that's how bad he was. "Henry had to take a screw out where the cyst was and he is still a little lame now, but he's been moved now to Surrey to a friend of ours and is recovering out in the field. "I don't know if he'll ever make the track again, but if there is a happy ending to the story it's that his life has been saved. "I still hold on to hope that maybe he can come back next year, if the racing Gods smile on us, but we will do what's best for him. "It's been a real emotional rollercoaster, there were points when I thought we were going to have to put him down, but they did everything they could to save him. "We owe him everything, he's given us the best days as a family." FREE BETS - GET THE BEST SIGN UP DEALS AND RACING OFFERS Commercial content notice: Taking one of the offers featured in this article may result in a payment to The Sun. You should be aware brands pay fees to appear in the highest placements on the page. 18+. T&Cs apply. Remember to gamble responsibly A responsible gambler is someone who: Establishes time and monetary limits before playing Only gambles with money they can afford to lose Never chases their losses Doesn't gamble if they're upset, angry or depressed Gamcare – Gamble Aware – Find our detailed guide on responsible gambling practices here.
The Sun
26-06-2025
- Sport
- The Sun
Fairytale sprinter Live In The Dream ‘nearly died' and unlikely to race again after serious injury
FAIRYTALE sprinter Live In The Dream is highly unlikely to race again after suffering a life-threatening injury. The six-year-old spent several weeks in a veterinary hospital this spring and definitely won't see a racecourse this year. 1 The horse was responsible for one of the most memorable big-race results in recent memory when winning the Nunthorpe Stakes at York. He caused a huge 28-1 shock on the Knavesmire two years ago to give Epsom-based Adam West his first Group 1 win, and then took his trainer and owners on the trip of a lifetime to the Breeders' Cup in America. But he never quite scaled the same heights and missed last year's Nunthorpe with a foot injury, and when West moved his operation to France he was taken out of the yard and sent to Ed Walker. He hadn't been at Walker's yard for long when he became sick, and his condition deteriorated to the point when his owner Steve de'Lemos thought the horse might die. De'Lemos said: "He had a cyst in his stifle joint and needed an operation and was recuperating at Donnington Grove. "He nearly died, he got a really bad infection and one of the vets there Henry O'Neill saved his life, he was superstar. They said a lot of people would have had him put down, but that was never an option, I told him to do everything he could for the horse. "He was in there six or seven weeks, he was on a drip a lot of the time. Sir Gino came and went while he was in there, that's how bad he was. "Henry had to take a screw out where the cyst was and he is still a little lame now, but he's been moved now to Surrey to a friend of ours and is recovering out in the field. "I don't know if he'll ever make the track again, but if there is a happy ending to the story it's that his life has been saved. "I still hold on to hope that maybe he can come back next year, if the racing Gods smile on us, but we will do what's best for him. "It's been a real emotional rollercoaster, there were points when I thought we were going to have to put him down, but they did everything they could to save him. "We owe him everything, he's given us the best days as a family." . Remember to gamble responsibly A responsible gambler is someone who:
New European
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New European
The film Putin didn't want you to see
Because the film industry has always been, to one degree or another, an unholy-bedfellow three-way between art, entertainment and commercial profit, the prickly kind of self-directed artist who might've thrived as a poet or painter can run the risk of facing what amounts to erasure. Sokurov belongs to this tribe. What seems like being his final work, Fairytale (2022), may end up being the greatest 21st-century film most of us will never get to see. There was no Aleksandr Sokurov film at Cannes this year. There may never be another. The Russian will turn 74 in June, but age is not the main reason why his half-century of film-making looks to have ended abruptly. Russia's culture ministry banned the movie from being seen in Russia, and as a result Sokurov, in December 2023, officially announced that as a result, his 'professional career… is over.' This would be a pity – Sokurov is a giant in the medium, a tireless experimenter whose films, as he's aged, have become only riskier and stranger, and have nonetheless sometimes found audiences around the world. That 50-year career-span covers a lot of history for a Russian: from before the Brezhnev Constitution of 1977 through the Russian-Afghan War, to Gorbachev and the dissolution of the USSR, and the subsequent decades of oligarchal turmoil and territorial war-waging, most of it presided over by Vladimir Putin. (Fairytale's plight at home is like a flashback for Sokurov, all of whose films made before 1987 have two dates – completion and exhibition – since his entire 10-year output before perestroika was secreted away by the censors.) History, the maddening fog and lingering scars of it, has always been one of Sokurov's reigning obsessions: his most famous films are the miraculous one-shot historical dream-tour Russian Ark (2002), and his plague-of-power tetralogy, coming leftward at Hitler, Lenin and Hirohito in Moloch (1999), Taurus (2001) and The Sun (2005) respectively, and then rounding the project with a screwy, grotty retelling of Faust (2011). Fairytale picks up the thread, in a sense – a film that sees the lust for power as a lost game of ghosts. It's not quite like any other film, for purely textural reasons: crafted largely without cameras, the film deploys digital imaging to revivify old newsreel footage of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin and Churchill, removing them from their historical contexts, and without ado plopping these four preening ogres down into a mist-shrouded purgatory, where they wander, grumble, bicker and bemoan their WWII decisions. You think you're looking at a whole film built with AI deepfakes – such a thing awaits us soon enough – but Sokurov only needed to digitally restore the footage, get a team of crack compositors to seamlessly layer the imagery, and dub the old power-dealers with new voices and dialogue, in their own tongues. Suggested Reading The film that put Netanyahu in court Ian Winwood Undead echoes of political hubris, the four miserable spirits (plus a few moments with Napoleon, whose ghost is already fading away into forgetfulness) proliferate – an average scene could have three Stalins and three Mussolinis and so forth, all at different ages and in different uniforms, gabbing with each other. They saunter past the camera and each other, idly exploring their vast holding cell, an un-Christianised limbo mostly comprised of antique etchings of ancient ruins, caves, and tangled forests, all of it drenched with Sokurov's trademarked murky haze. (The dust motes, the single added tear on Stalin's cheek…) Skazka (2022) Skazka (2022) Very real dead soldiers litter the landscape, and you can see bombed-out cities in the distance. The dead men seem to want to talk to God, to negotiate their way out. But mostly they dismissively bounce off one another, like ghosts in a Beckett play, walking in large circles, tossing growled insults, and remarking a lot on how the others stink. All movies are dreams, but watching Sokurov's films can be like slowly waking from a dawn sleepwalk, moist with sweat and one step away from a cliff-edge. The primary experience of Fairytale does not coddle you with narrative progression – which shouldn't come as a stunner for Sokurov fans, who might have with Stone (1992), Spiritual Voices (1995) and Russian Ark under their belts. It is, rather, an exercise in poisonous iconicity, mustering out of thin air a kind of metaphysical autopsy on 20th-century Euro-fallout, in the shape of a dream in which you want to run but can't move your feet. The less hardy viewers may squirm, but for anyone willing to consider films as objets d'art rather than merely snappy stories – they're Sokurov's tribe – every moment of Fairytale is a conjured miracle, graphically gorgeous and mysterious while simultaneously reconstituting these legendary men for real (not actors masquerading), and having us reconsider their vainglorious absurdity in sharp contrast to the historical destruction they wrought so long ago. That's the magic of found footage at work: we step into the ruminative abyss between the original intentions of the piece of film (here, newsreels and propaganda) and the ironic, recontextualised purposes it is put to now. Each image means, but Sokurov has reclaimed them and resituated them, and set these charismatic megafauna scrambling like self-deluded rats in a maze without an exit. In fact, the film is almost a valedictorian gesture for Sokurov, whose early short Sonata for Hitler (1979/89) was a howl of rage assembled entirely from archive footage. It's a sign of the man's aesthetic energy that as he has careened through various forms and genres – found footage experiments (ranging from ten minutes to 13 hours long) but also ironic adaptations of Flaubert and Shaw, free-associative documentaries, surreally visualised melodrama, brooding realism, twisted historical biopics, historical journalism, ambient dream videos, and so on – there's no mistaking his stubborn spectral signature. Sokurov's scrupulous anti-narrative manner and demiurgic authority with visual mood shapes every sort of material into a unique mirage, crepuscular, elusive, cunningly accented by layered dissolves or reflected distortions. There's almost too much of it. Any cinema or museum organising a complete Sokurov retrospective would have its work cut out for it; has never been able to quite keep up, and Sokurov's own website declares itself as 'an attempt' to corral his output. If Fairytale does turn out to be his epic career's capstone, it would be both a fascinating farewell and a life's work well completed. But it would also be tragic for us.. Fairytale is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video
The Irish Sun
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Eurovision winner looks like he hasn't aged a day 16 years after winning show
THIS Eurovision champ looks like he hasn't aged a day - 16 years after winning the show. The final for the 6 This Eurovision star won the show for Norway Credit: Instagram / @rybakofficial 6 The star is known for playing the violin Credit: Instagram / @rybakofficial 6 Alexander Rybak looks like he hasn't aged a day - seen here when he won Eurovision 2009 Credit: Getty 6 The star looks exactly the same 16 years on - seen here in 2025 Credit: Instagram / @rybakofficial The singer, who's act also sees him playing the violin, was just 23 when he scooped the Song Contest crown. He stole the show with his hugely popular song Fairytale, which saw him sweep the scoreboard. Alexander broke all previous records with his score of 387 points. Read more on Eurovision The track topped the charts once he won, and his album Fairytales was released in 25 countries. Speaking about the song that helped him win, Alexander told the 'It's essentially an old-fashioned oom-pah tune with Tin Pan Alley chords, but people called it a 'modern tune' because I believed in it in the here and now. "I will be forever grateful for the people who stream it and show it to their friends, so that it may live on and be discovered by new generations.' Most read in Celebrity health Alexander has returned to Eurovision several times over the years. He has appeared on several interval medleys and even appeared as himself in the Netflix comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga. Rylan makes VERY awkward gaffe during first live Eurovision semi-final Alexander also competed again 2018, with the song That's How You Write a Song. This time he placed 15th with 144 points. HOST PULLS OUT Meanwhile, yesterday it was revealed how the BBC were forced to find a replacement after one of the UK's The Beeb shared a statement that said 6 Ncuti Gatwa pulled out of Eurovision at the last minute Credit: Getty The much-loved star is instead being replaced by The BBC said: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, unfortunately "However, we are delighted to confirm that BBC Radio 2's very own Friday night Kitchen Disco Diva A thrilled Sophie said: 'I love Eurovision and it's a privilege to be part of 2025's Grand Final. 6 Sophie Ellis-Bextor will replace him on the show Credit: Instagram/BBC Press office "What an honour it is to announce the UK's jury score on such a special show which always puts music front and centre. "I am very much looking forward to delivering the iconic douze points from the United Kingdom !' GRAHAM RETURNS Fans will be pleased to know that Graham Norton returns to provide his witty commentary for tonight. The national treasure took over from the late Eurovision will kick off this evening at in Basel, Switzerland at 8pm on BBC One. Everything you need to know about Eurovision Here's your complete guide to all things Eurovision: Who was How to host a How many times has How much is Graham Norton paid and what's his When has Eurovision
The Sun
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Eurovision winner looks like he hasn't aged a day 16 years after winning show
THIS Eurovision champ looks like he hasn't aged a day - 16 years after winning the show. The final for the famous Song Contest gets underway tonight, and this star knows all about performing on the much-loved show. 6 6 6 6 Alexander Rybak shot to fame when he won Eurovision for Norway in 2009. The singer, who's act also sees him playing the violin, was just 23 when he scooped the Song Contest crown. He stole the show with his hugely popular song Fairytale, which saw him sweep the scoreboard. Alexander broke all previous records with his score of 387 points. The track topped the charts once he won, and his album Fairytales was released in 25 countries. Speaking about the song that helped him win, Alexander told the Huff Post in 2022: 'Fairytale lets me have fun with music and experiment with new genres and styles every year. 'It's essentially an old-fashioned oom-pah tune with Tin Pan Alley chords, but people called it a 'modern tune' because I believed in it in the here and now. "I will be forever grateful for the people who stream it and show it to their friends, so that it may live on and be discovered by new generations.' Alexander has returned to Eurovision several times over the years. He has appeared on several interval medleys and even appeared as himself in the Netflix comedy Eurovision Song Contest: The Story Of Fire Saga. Rylan makes VERY awkward gaffe during first live Eurovision semi-final Alexander also competed again 2018, with the song That's How You Write a Song. This time he placed 15th with 144 points. HOST PULLS OUT Meanwhile, yesterday it was revealed how the BBC were forced to find a replacement after one of the UK's Eurovision hosts pulled out at the last minute. The Beeb shared a statement that said Dr Who 's Ncuti Gatwa, is no long able to read out the scores from the UK jury. 6 The much-loved star is instead being replaced by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. The BBC said: "Due to unforeseen circumstances, unfortunately Ncuti Gatwa is no longer able to participate as Spokesperson during the Grand Final this weekend. "However, we are delighted to confirm that BBC Radio 2's very own Friday night Kitchen Disco Diva Sophie Ellis-Bextor will be presenting the Jury result live from the UK." A thrilled Sophie said: 'I love Eurovision and it's a privilege to be part of 2025's Grand Final. 6 "What an honour it is to announce the UK's jury score on such a special show which always puts music front and centre. "I am very much looking forward to delivering the iconic douze points from the United Kingdom!' Sophie will be seen announcing the scores from the British jury. GRAHAM RETURNS Fans will be pleased to know that Graham Norton returns to provide his witty commentary for tonight. The national treasure took over from the late Terry Wogan in 2009 and has been a fan favourite ever since. Eurovision will kick off this evening at in Basel, Switzerland at 8pm on BBC One.
