theartsdesk com, first with arts reviews, news and interviews
Nick Hasted
Thursday, 09 April 2020
“They say we all have a beast locked up inside of us,” a character observes early in this Korean crime movie. Monsters are certainly chewing at the moral fibre of police captains...
Aleks Sierz
Thursday, 09 April 2020
She’s an ordinary young woman, and she really doesn’t know what to think. After all, things are way out of control. She knows that the natural world is pretty fucked, and that...
Thomas H Green
Thursday, 09 April 2020
ZZ Top always seemed like a Texan version of Status Quo. It turns out, from watching this entertaining but hardly revelatory documentary, that is kind of what they are. Directed...
Jasper Rees
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
John Prine, who has died at the age of 73 from a Covid 19-related illness, was one of the great American folk poets. Having spent his early adulthood pounding the sidewalks as a...
Matt Wolf
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
The talk is of an “economy in ruin [with] unemployment through the roof”: a précis of Britain in lockdown? In fact, this is one of the many eerily apposite remarks to be found in...
Joe Boyd
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
When it comes to making records, I love deadlines. Embarking on an open-ended project, particularly with the infinite number of overdubs made possible by ProTools, is my idea of...
David Nice
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
One way to look at Stravinsky's celebrated collaboration with W H Auden and Chester Kallman is as a numbers opera in nine...
Sarah Collins
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
When Amer Deghayes departed for Syria in a truck leaving from Birmingham, a worker from a youth arts organisation in...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
When the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany was liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division...
Adam Sweeting
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
Director Oleg Stepchenko’s follow-up to his 2014 yarn Forbidden Kingdom swaps the latter’s Transylvania for a fantastical...
Nick Hasted
Wednesday, 08 April 2020
Their debut’s title was a disillusioned shrug, and for most of the 19 years since Is This It, The Strokes have continued...
Matt Wolf
Tuesday, 07 April 2020
One of the most blistering stage performances in recent memory gets a renewed lease on life with the streaming of the 2019...
Joe Muggs
Tuesday, 07 April 2020
The Colors studio in Berlin has quietly created one of the biggest new brands in music from filming back-to-basics...
Aleks Sierz
Tuesday, 07 April 2020
Artemisia Gentileschi has definitely had a hard time. Although she was an outstanding Renaissance painter in the style of...
Thomas H Green
Tuesday, 07 April 2020
For the duration of this C19 Lockdown, rather than the usual sprawling monthly epic, theartsdesk on Vinyl will be presented...
Graham Rickson
Tuesday, 07 April 2020
These three films come from Buster Keaton’s mid-1920s purple patch, the high spots of which prompted critic Roger Ebert to...
Adam Sweeting
Monday, 06 April 2020
While not the most headline-catching show on Netflix, Ozark has been steadily accruing critical accolades (including a...
David Nice
Monday, 06 April 2020
Necessity has certainly been the mother of invention over the past three weeks, and orchestras especially, left in the...
Marianka Swain
Monday, 06 April 2020
The latest in Sadler’s Wells’ Digital Stage programme – an impressively assembled online offering to keep audiences...
tv
Return to Belsen, ITV review - Jonathan Dimbleby retraces his father's journey to a nightmare world
Are the terrible lessons of the Holocaust in danger of being forgotten?
Ozark, Series 3 review, Netflix - money-laundering saga hits new heights
A superb cast and powerful writing are making this show a classic
Mark Kermode's Secrets of Cinema, BBC Four review - the undying allure of the spying game
A voyage through the secret world on celluloid
film
The Iron Mask review - preposterous multi-national fantasy
Oleg Stepchenko's film is a weird mix of Chinese folklore, bogus history and atrocious dubbing
Blu-ray: Buster Keaton - Three Films, Vol. 2
Technical brilliance and belly laughs: three features from a great director at his peak
new music
ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band From Texas, Netflix review - riffs, drugs and rodeos
Documentary on Texan rockers never really gets under the hood but is still passingly enjoyable
Remembering John Prine, one of the great American singer-songwriters
A tribute to the blue-collar folk poet, who has died at the age of 73
Joe Boyd's Recording Heaven
The legendary producer on the making of Damir Imamović’s album Singer of Tales
classical
Classical Music/Opera direct to home 5 - orchestral manoeuvres in the light
Filleted Bach, Beethoven and Ravel, complete anthemic Sibelius
Classical CDs Weekly: Beethoven, Prokofiev, A Tale of Two Violas
Weighty piano sonatas from Germany and Russia, plus a disc of string duets
'Most significant is the experience of being confronted by different ideas': Steven Osborne on free piano lessons from quarantine
One of the world's great pianists on why he needs to teach right now
opera
The Rake's Progress, Complicité online review - well-projected journey from pastoral to madhouse
Big, bold approach to time-travelling Stravinsky misses out on nuance
The Turn of the Screw, Opera North, OperaVision review - claustrophobic visions of terror and beauty
Strongly-cast revival keeps the ambiguities of Henry James's ghost story in play
Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera, OperaVision review - natural comedy, musical sublimity
Durable period setting enshrines perfect characterisations. Plus a Handel special
theatre
Gators, Tramp Productions online review – the glittering dark
Gloriously surreal monologue about everyday anxieties in extraordinary circumstances
Wonderland, Hampstead Theatre online review - a major play about the miners
Beth Steel award-winner makes for muscular, eerily apposite fare
Cyprus Avenue, Royal Court Theatre online review - a mind in mesmerising meltdown
Stephen Rea rivets once again in David Ireland play
dance
Rumpelstiltskin, Sadler's Wells Digital Stage review - spins an engaging yarn for young audiences
balletLORENT provides a sunnier take on the the Brothers Grimm
Richard Alston Dance Company, Final Edition, Sadler's Wells review - farewell and thank you, Sir Richard
Amid tears and cheers, the company takes a final bow
Isadora Now, Barbican Theatre review - a little piece of history
Attempt to revive the spirit of Isadora Duncan is of academic interest, little more
comedy
Blu-ray: Buster Keaton - Three Films, Vol. 2
Technical brilliance and belly laughs: three features from a great director at his peak
Lazy Susan, Soho Theatre On Demand review - sketch duo's ingeniously plotted show
Freya Parker and Celeste Dring examine male behaviour
gaming
Rage 2 review – garish but great post-apocalyptic shooter
Challenge The Authority in this 'Mad Max on mushrooms' renegade romp
Win a Luxury Weekend for Two to Celebrate Brighton Festival!
An eclectic line-up spanning music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, comedy, literature and spoken word could be yours with boutique hotel and exquisite meals included
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocalypse
Chainsawing the brain-eaters as you battle against the tide of the undead
visual arts
10 Questions for Irina Nalis
Multidisciplinary thinking at a multidisciplinary festival in a time of crisis
Léon Spilliaert, Royal Academy review - a maudlin exploration of solitude
The world seen through the eyes of melancholy
Among the Trees, Hayward Gallery review - a mixture of euphoria and dismay
Our complex relationship with trees explored to powerful effect
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