Since time immemorial the Edinburgh International Festival has started with a juicy choral epic designed to show off the Festival Chorus and the opulent Usher Hall. So this performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony would normally have been billed as the opening concert. But the forces of democratisation and outreach have been at work.

With Gloria (2013), A Fantastic Woman (2017) and Disobedience (2018), Chile’s Sebastián Lelio has earned a deserved reputation as a sympathetic director of women.

Christian Lindberg: Steppenwolf – Viola Concerto, Tales of Galamanta, Peking Twilight Rafael Altino (viola), Odense Symphony Orchestra/Christian Lindberg (BIS)

Rocketman opens with its hero in flamboyant stage costume stomping into a drab group therapy session. Pulling the sparkling horns off his magnificent head-dress and shuffling his feathered wings into a seat, Elton John demands of his fellow addicts, ‘How long is this going to take?’ The intimidated counsellor replies, ‘That’s really up to you’.

Unfortunately, it’s now reached the point where it’s impossible to mention Morrissey without politics overshadowing music. His recent wearing of a For Britain Party lapel pin on US TV is only the latest in a catalogue of public stances that seem to indicate he’s a fan of the far right. His new album, an imaginative explosion of intriguing cover versions, including multiple collaborations, may be an attempt to move the conversation on but, for many, things have already gone too far.

This year, Cannes has been adamantly defending traditional cinema, with more than a few jibes at Netflix (who remain persona non grata at the festival), but that hasn’t stopped them screening two episodes of Nicolas Winding Refn’s new Amazon TV series, Too Old To Die Young. Refn has gone on record stating that his latest project is still cinema — a 13-hour film that shows all the verve and ambition you’d expect from the Danish auteur.

It's five years since Steven Ellison aka Flying Lotus released an album, and it's not entirely clear how far he's moved creatively. To be fair he's been busy branching out in other directions, producing for superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar, making short films, and helping members of his Brainfeeder stable like Thundercat and Kamasi Washington along to greater fame. But with this album he seems to have taken up precisely where 2014's “Your Dead” left off.

Billie Eilish is a vaudevillian. Crack that and everything else falls into place.

Disappointment is instant, anyway. David Robert Mitchell’s second film, It Follows, was a teenage horror tragedy of perfectly sustained emotion. His third, Under the Silver Lake, seems superficial and scattershot, a callow effort at a magnum opus, in which the former work’s feeling is replaced by pop culture riffs.

Confessions first: I fell asleep mid-way through Time Is Love/Tiempo es Amor, from too much time on trains and planes over the New Year. I was kindly allowed back for a second visit to the Finborough Theatre show, for a Sunday matinee, dosed with coffee and determined to concentrate fully. This was a good thing. The production's name attraction, Olivier Award-winner Sheila Atim, had previously seemed a minor part whereas her masterful performance (must one say mistressful these days?) as Rosa the stripper is a highlight of the piece.