After releasing three successful albums and winning an ARIA award, indie rock band Art of Fighting all but disappeared. Having returned with their first record in 12 years, Luna Low, they discuss their thoughtful brand of songwriting, their collaborative process and their long hiatus. “Maybe we felt like we’d run our creative course to a point,” says Ollie Browne, “and there was a fear of eroding the artistry even more.”

Rather than worrying about the nuclear threat from his homeland’s northern neighbour, South Korean director and screenwriter Bong Joon-ho has used his latest Palme d’Or-winning film, Parasite, to home in on the country’s increasing economic divide. “Of course we do worry about North Korea and want peace to come and our relationship to improve, but it’s not something that happens right next to me. What we really feel with our skin are economic issues.”

Travelling north from California to Oregon on the Coast Starlight rail line, the traveller observes the fade of Los Angeles’ pressing population until the forests part for a moment’s glimpse of smalltown USA.

As The Native Cats, Julian Teakle and Chloe Alison Escott make poetic and unusually stripped-back music that riffs on gender and sexuality by way of a James M. Cain pulp novel. “Life after transitioning is the closest that you ever get to time travel, in a way,” Escott says. “You try to be somebody that you wish was there in the past. You see people who remind you of yourself at a certain time, so you think, ‘What’s the thing that I can say or do for this person?’”

Spike Lee’s new film BlacKkKlansman tells a true story of an African–American policeman infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan. Its themes of blaxploitation, racism and oppression, says the filmmaker, perfectly reflect the political climate we live in now. “When Kevin [Willmott, the film’s co-writer] and I came on board, our No. 1 concern, as storytellers, was to connect this period piece to present day. We had to con-nect. So, we did our research.”

He trained for a career in British theatre, but Gary Oldman has since appeared in some of Hollywood’s top-grossing film franchises and played some of history’s most famous men. Here, the Oscar winner opens up about learning his craft and the value of insecurity. “It would be a sad day to really be able to sit there and watch yourself and go, ‘Wow, I’m fantastic in this.’ You should always be questioning and pushing yourself, and having doubt and insecurity is a good thing, but it can’t immobilise you.”

The windswept Shetland Islands harbour a culture equal parts Norse and Scottish, leaving English-speaking visitors feeling always on the edge of something familiar.

The tidiness and folksy veneer of Portland, Maine, lends a Truman Show feel to the seaside city they call ‘Vacationland’.

To get a table at quintessential New York Italian restaurant Rao’s you need to have got your name in the book in 1977 – or know someone who did. Yet the warm welcome you’ll get once inside, will stave off the winter cold.