CDs/DVDs
New Music CDs Round-Up 11Saturday, 31 July 2010
CD of the MonthTom Jones, Praise & Blame (Universal/Island) by Adam Sweeting Reinvention is all very well, and indeed indispensable for any career that aims to last longer than a series of X Factor, but you can have enough of seeing Tom... Read more... |
DVD Release: Black NarcissusSaturday, 31 July 2010
Violet may be the most violent colour in the spectrum, but its emotional equivalent in the cinema of Michael Powell is red, which frequently symbolises overwhelming sexual and artistic desire. Powell fetishised redness - and redheads like Deborah... Read more... |
DVD: Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, London Calling, Live in Hyde ParkMonday, 26 July 2010
One of those deathless Sopranos moments is where Christopher Moltisanti turns up late at the Bada Bing club for a meeting with Silvio Dante and Tony Soprano, and they ask him what kept him. “The highway was jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance... Read more... |
Classical CDs Round-Up 10Saturday, 24 July 2010
It’s the 150th anniversary of Mahler’s birth, so we investigate a 16-disc box containing his (almost) complete works, along with two other recordings of Mahler symphonies. There’s an impressive new set of Beethoven piano concertos, and there’s more... Read more... |
New Music CDs Round-Up 10Saturday, 03 July 2010
This month's most interesting new music CDs according to theartsdesk music team includes a dark take on sex and consumerism by The-Dream, which is CD of the Month, "morally ambiguous" South London gangsta rap from Giggs, disco pop from Sia, Scissor... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 9Saturday, 19 June 2010
This month’s selection includes a flamboyant fin-de-siècle Italian symphony that could give you a nosebleed. A little-known American band provide a fresh take on a British 1930s warhorse, and classy Viennese musicians play some delectable... Read more... |
DVD Release: Eagles Over LondonWednesday, 16 June 2010
This 1969 Italian movie has accrued a somewhat baffling mystique, not least because of the way it has been lavished with praise by the excitable Quentin Tarantino. This DVD issue includes a hilariously amateurish short of Tarantino hosting a low-... Read more... |
DVD Release: StagecoachTuesday, 15 June 2010
For the second time in four years, John Ford’s Stagecoach - the epochal black-and-white 1939 B-western that made a star of John Wayne and an icon of Monument Valley, and anticipated Ford’s unequalled run of westerns over the next quarter-century and... Read more... |
DVD: Red SunSunday, 13 June 2010
Hollywood westerns and Japanese samurai movies have long been generic companions. Akira Kurosawa borrowed from the films of John Ford for his chambara (a term referring to period drama with swordfighting), while Hollywood borrowed back again by... Read more... |
DVD Release: EarthSunday, 13 June 2010
Note to lovers of those periodic lists of all-time international cultural landmarks: I seem to remember that Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth once came in at number 82 in one such “best films ever” critical appraisal. Though that may place it somewhere... Read more... |
New Music CDs Round-Up 9Saturday, 29 May 2010
This month's most delicious sounds found by our reviewers include a return to form by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden, new electronica/grime from Rude Kid, impressive debuts from Villagers and Hindi Zahra, and the latest from... Read more... |
Classical Music CDs Round-Up 8Saturday, 22 May 2010
This month the selection varies from sackbutts to serialism, by way of condensed Wagner, Elgar conducted by the much-missed Vernon Handley and music from both Shostakovich and a disciple of his. Among contemporary music there is Osvaldo Golijov’s... Read more... |
