My cultural awakening: A Jim Carrey series made me embrace baldness – and shave my head on the spot

I was a mess of insecurities, trying to hide thinning hair, worried I was ageing too quickly. Then a scene in the TV show Kidding changed everythingGrowing up, I was obsessed with Jim Carrey. I was just entering my teens when The Mask came out, and I can still picture myself watching Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls on TV one weekend afternoon, absolutely howling at the silliness of it. His elastic facial expressions, the energy, the stunts – it was the perfect tenor of humour for a young boy.By the time I was in college, I had moved on to his more thoughtful films

From Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere to IT: Welcome to Derry – your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

Jeremy Allen White channels the Boss in a hotly tipped new biopic, and Pennywise the clown returns to terrorise unsuspecting children in a spooky horror prequel seriesSpringsteen: Deliver Me from NowhereOut now The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White plays the Boss in this buzzed-about Bruce Springsteen biopic focusing on the period when he was making his 1982 album Nebraska (so, post-Born to Run but pre-Born in the USA), with Jeremy Strong playing critic turned producer Jon Landau.The MastermindOut now Kelly Reichardt returns with an art heist movie inspired by a real robbery in 1970s Massachusetts, in which two Gauguins, a Picasso and a Rembrandt were nicked. Here, it’s Arthur Dove paintings that catch the eye of Josh O’Connor’s art thief James Blaine Mooney.ParaNormanOut now An odd dearth of family films has left a gap in the market into which this rerelease of 2012’s animated adventure ParaNorman has decided to slip. Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the misfit 11-year-old who speaks with the dead, enabling a spooky adventure to unfold in time for Halloween

John Deere obituary

My father, John Deere, who has died aged 89, was the arts director of Nottingham county council for 20 years. A passionate advocate for the arts, he was appointed to the post in the council’s newly established leisure services department in 1975, following the national reorganisation of local authorities.There, for 20 years, he transformed the artistic life of Nottinghamshire through development and funding of arts activities across the county. In the town of Retford, he supported the internationally famous Cantamus girls choir and, in Mansfield, the Mansfield Palace theatre.Events ranged from concerts by world-renowned musicians such as Vladimir Ashkenazy, André Previn and the pianist John Ogdon, a native of Nottinghamshire, to poetry readings by established poets such as Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan’s daughter

Timely assurance from Lear’s Kent | Letters

The passing of John Woodvine (Obituary, 13 October) reminded me of the time when four of us University of East Anglia students went to the Norwich Theatre Royal to see the Actors’ Company touring King Lear in June 1974.We were early and went for a something to eat at a newly opened “burger” style restaurant with booths and partitions so you couldn’t see who was at adjacent tables – a novelty at the time. The service was very slow and we were concerned that we would be late for the theatre.Suddenly a head appeared over the partition and said: “Don’t worry – they won’t start without me!” It was John Woodvine, who turned out to be the Earl of Kent and was the first to speak in the play. Needless to say we made it in time

The Guide #214: Sleep-inducing songs and tranquilising TV – the culture that sends us to sleep (in a good way)

How do you sleep at night? If you’re like Hannah, a recent subject of the Guardian’s My cultural awakening column, it’s to the sound of a rat whisking eggs. The series shares stories of people who made a significant life change thanks to a piece of popular culture, and in the case of Hannah, that meant curing insomnia by watching Ratatouille. Every night for the last 15 years, at home or abroad, she switches on the Pixar classic and, within minutes, finds herself dropping off, thanks to the film’s comforting, consistent soundscape. It’s so effective, in fact, she’s never even seen it all the way through.Hannah’s might be a bit of an extreme example, but her tale does touch on something universal: culture seems to play an increasingly important role these days in helping people nod off

Seth Meyers on Trump’s White House ballroom: ‘This couldn’t be any more of a bait and switch’

Late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing of the White House and the corporate sponsors of his $300m gilded ballroom.On Thursday’s Late Night, Seth Meyers expressed disbelief over the president’s gilded ballroom project for the White House. “It would be bad enough if Trump’s biggest priority was just building a gilded vanity project for himself, but it’s so much worse,” he said. “Because to do it, he’s tearing down a somewhat well-known and beloved piece of property.”That would be the entire East Wing of the presidential residence, which has stood for 120 years