Mexico
Yuri Herrera: A Silent Fury review – the fire last timeSunday, 14 June 2020
History, as protestors around the world currently insist, can be the art of forgetting – and erasure – as much as of memory. Although it explores a single incident from a century ago, Yuri Herrera’s brief, forensic but quietly impassioned account of... Read more... |
Midnight Family review - a thrilling documentary set in Mexico CitySaturday, 22 February 2020
“It’s cool to see a car crash or a gunshot wound, it’s exciting.” Emergency medical technician Juan Ochoa, 17, loves his work, which is just as well because he doesn’t always get paid.Luke Lorentzen’s award-winning documentary (he directed, produced... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: David Matthews, José Rolón, Shirley SmartSaturday, 29 June 2019
David Matthews: Symphony No 9, Variations for Strings, Double Concerto for Violin and Viola Sarah Trickey (violin), Sarah-Jane Bradley (viola), English Symphony Orchestra/Kenneth Woods (Nimbus Alliance)Ninth symphonies are usually big beasts,... Read more... |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - The Peyote DanceSaturday, 25 May 2019
Soundwalk Collective is a multi-disciplinary audio-visual collective founded by Stephan Crasneanscki, a musical psycho-geographer and field recorder, the source material of his works drawn from specific locations: in the case of The Peyote Dance, it... Read more... |
Mike Jay: Mescaline - A Global History of the First Psychedelic review - multiple perspectivesSunday, 12 May 2019
Humans have been consuming mescaline for millennia. The hallucinogenic alkaloid occurs naturally in a variety of cacti native to South America and the southern United States, the most well known of which are the diminutive peyote and the... Read more... |
Rodrigo y Gabriela, Roundhouse - sound and (new) noiseThursday, 25 April 2019
It was in the early 2000s in a tiny, gritty bar that I first saw Rodrigo y Gabriela live. Camden was less pretty then – a look was close to a glare and there were more spikes and kohl – the nineties were that much closer. I was right at... Read more... |
She Persisted, English National Ballet, Sadler's Wells review - a must-see triple billSaturday, 06 April 2019
She does indeed persist, that remarkable Tamara Rojo. Dismayed by the fact that, in 20 years as a dancer, she had never performed a ballet made by a woman, she mounted a triple bill called She Said, featuring only work by and about women. That 2016... Read more... |
Chloe Aridjis: Sea Monsters review - a teenage bestiarySunday, 03 February 2019
We've all been there. The disappointing fling. The gently shattered illusions. The abortive holiday eliding languor and boredom. Teenage ennui. Revels peopled by runaways. Talking animals. Talking animals? Well, fine. Not quite.Sea Monsters is Chloe... Read more... |
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, V&A review - appearances aren't everythingTuesday, 03 July 2018
When in 2004 Frida Kahlo’s bedroom – sealed on the command of her husband Diego Rivera for 50 years from her death – was opened, a trove of clothes and personal items was discovered. They shed new light on the life of this iconic Mexican... Read more... |
Sicario: Day of the Soldado review - violent, explosive and nihilistic thrillerThursday, 28 June 2018
The issue of immigrants being smuggled across the Mexican border into the USA is currently live and inflammatory, and this second instalment of the feds-versus-drugs cartels saga hurls us right into the centre of it. This explosive thriller is... Read more... |
Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA, BBC Four review - unexpected facts aplentyThursday, 24 May 2018
“Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light” was a vision of the American flag, that star-spangled banner, riding proud from Francis Scott Key’s patriotic poem of 1814 based on an episode in the War of 1812. His sentiments were decades later... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: CocoTuesday, 22 May 2018
The brightness and colour are deceptive; at its heart, Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina’s Coco is an affecting reflection on death, remembrance and the redemptive power of music, dressed up as a frenetic and gag-stuffed Disney comedy. I’d place it... Read more... |
