This week has seen not one, but two new sporting mascots unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

Friends with Kids, 110 mins, 15

Directors' Olympic film relay struggles to get out of the blocks

Mark Rylance, one of Britain's most respected actors and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare's Globe theatre in London, has defended his role in a film that pours doubt on the identity of the Bard.

The rising cost of motoring is encouraging more people to use public transport, according to bus and train group Go-Ahead.

Previewing in Glasgow before its premiere proper at New York's Performa biennial next week, this piece by the Danish-Norwegian conceptual art duo Elmgreen & Dragset blurs the line between performance art and theatre.

Much is made, by the Gunpowder Theatre Company, of the fact that Days of the Commune is one of Bertolt Brecht's least-performed plays. Cynics might reply that there is a reason for this. This is a hefty, agenda-ridden account of the Paris Commune and as such it represents a challenge in any milieu – all the more so when that happens to be behind a South London pub during a grudge football match.

One-time boxing champion Johnny Harris has become a Brit-flick star

Much is made, by the Gunpowder Theatre Company, of their latest endeavour’s ambition.

Rachel Cusk's re-published third novel is reminder of just what an impressive writer she has always been. This rustic satire sees Cusk eschewing the clean, cool lines of modern fiction for an altogether denser affair. Billed as comedy, it's sometimes hard to spot the joke in this merciless journey into "the solipsistic cabbage patch" of a young woman's mind.

He has previously told MPs he was not aware of the details behind the Taylor deal

The singer Adele has cancelled her 10-date US tour as she revealed she is in danger of permanently damaging her vocal cords.

Abel Ferrara has gone clean. US indie cinema's bard of drug abuse, sleaze and violence has been known in the past to turn up three hours late for interviews – and then promptly fall asleep. The colourful Bronx-born director of Driller Killer, King of New York and The Funeral, is due in Venice later this week for the premiere of his new film 4:44 Last Day on Earth about a couple confronting the end of the world. The word in advance of his arrival is that his own wild days are now firmly behind him. In the press notes for the new movie, he even quotes the Dalai Lama. The publicists are so confident that he's a reformed character that they are scheduling some of his interviews for early in the morning. Whether he'll turn up or not remains to be seen.