Reviews
theartsdesk
The festival market is one that has, like much of Britain, become oversaturated of late. Here at theartsdesk however, we feel that there’s room for one more as long as it’s of the highest possible quality. Here, then, is our line-up, a dream festival pulled together from our writers’ highlights of the past year. It’s two days over two stages and, best of all absolutely no danger of getting some hideous water-borne disease while sleeping in a substandard tent. SATURDAY MAIN STAGEThe Prodigy: 10.00 - 11.30The Prodigy may have been going for a quarter of a century but their fire is far Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
For his latest journey Michael Palin, actor, writer, novelist, comedian, Python, traveller, has gone beyond geography in search of the visual arts with his characteristic enthusiasm, eclectic curiosity, and sense of discovery.With his usual exuberance, here he persuasively described the packed life – and art – of that most unusual baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-c.1655). He was inspired by sighting her ferociously violent take on Judith decapitating Holofernes (pictured below) in the Capodimonte Gallery in Naples where Artemisia lived – aside from several years in London – for the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Earlier this year, Sky Living showed The Enfield Haunting, a tale of eerie events in a 1970s council house. One of its stars was Timothy Spall, playing a paranormal researcher. Maybe he had a premonition that his son Rafe would carry on the family's supernatural tradition in the leading role of Harry Price: Ghost Hunter (★★★★★).Anyhow, Spall Jr was shrewd, witty and skilful in the role of a 1920s spookbuster called in to investigate the mysterious case of a politician's wife, Grace Goodwin, who had been found wandering naked in a London market. Part of the problem was that she and Read more ...
theartsdesk
The autumn cinema schedules of 2015 were assailed by the double whammy of Spectre and The Force Awakens– at times making it hard to find a screen showing anything else. Yet you’ll see that neither that latest instalment in the Bond franchise – though it’s been acclaimed as among the very best – nor the much-anticipated return of Star Wars appears on our list. Does that place us at the higher-brow end of the spectrum? Or sticking to a more determinedly eclectic ground, with Asif Kapadia's remarkable documentary Amy, Bill Condon’s unexpected addition to the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Everyone knows a Nan – whether their own grandmother, someone else's, or maybe an elderly woman you see on the bus rudely (but rightly) telling youngsters they shouldn't be sitting when she has to stand. My grandmothers were nothing like the foul-mouthed curmudgeon that Catherine Tate has so vividly created, but the version of her I knew was a childhood neighbour; like Tate's character, dear old Mrs J would be perfectly nice to someone's face but when they left the room she would spit out: “Never liked him/her.”That Nan taps into some personal connection for many of us is a large part of her Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There are around 800 pages in a Dickensian doorstopper and it has been said around 800 times that if Dickens were working today he would be a show runner on a soap. Finally it has come to pass. Andrew Davies attempted something similar with his Bleak House, diced up into half-hour gobbets. But Dickensian is nothing less – or maybe that should be nothing more – than EastEnders in top hats and mobcaps.Its 20 episodes have been scheduled over that time of year which Dickens wishes could happen all the year round, two episodes a day. Its scriptwriter Tony Jordan, formerly of EastEnders, had Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Revealing a new story which completely rewrites an existing one is not easy in the world of reissues. With so much already known, and with pop and rock history constantly being revisited, it’s always surprising when a fresh tale is told. And it’s even more so when it’s actually worth knowing. Although issued in June, Saved by the Bell: The Collected Works of Robin Gibb 1968-1970 has been saved for the end of the year as it was instantly apparent that it did, indeed, rewrite history. It also included a wealth of extraordinary music, most of which had never been previously released – or even Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
On Monday ITV showed BAFTA Celebrates Downton Abbey, in which a massed gathering of cast and crew plus a few celebrity guests toasted Downton's five-year stampede to global acclaim. Its creator Julian Fellowes waddled onstage and told an anecdote about how he'd been accosted by a Downton fan while browsing in a Barnes & Noble bookshop in New York. "Just let Edith be happy!" she wailed at him.As it turned out in this double-length finale, he did, exercising the God-like authority the Emmy, Golden Globe and BAFTA-scooping show has bestowed on him. In fact it all went a bit Richard Curtis as Read more ...
David Nice
The musical future looks bright indeed, at least from my perspective. There are more classical concerts than ever going on across the UK on most days of the year, so who can know with any authority what might have been missed? Yet each of theartsdesk’s classical music writers has a special take on the events of 2015, and part of mine has been the special privilege of following a trail of younger players in out-of-the-way places.Serendipity began in Fife’s East Neuk Festival, where travelling up a day earlier than originally planned meant I caught the second concert given by the young Read more ...
Matt Wolf
A host of pictorially arresting, even painterly images can't make a satisfying whole out of In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard's film that doesn't dig very deep, its penetrating title notwitstanding. Howard has always been drawn to unusual realms, whether they be the intellect in A Beautiful Mind or space in Apollo 13 but his would-be literary-historical voyage into the world of squalls at sea has too many passages that are simply wet. Bring back Master and Commander. At heart a sort of Into the Storm with English Lit 101 bells on, the film posits a look at how Herman Melville's 1851 Read more ...
Steve O'Rourke
When a discussion about ‘What was the best game of 2015?" stretches through a whole evening in the pub you know that: (a) you need to stop socialising with games journalists, and (b) 2015 has been a corker of a year in videogames.Crystal balls make great paperweights, as the saying goes, and while just a year ago many games critics were lamenting the lack of original titles in the 2015 release list, few could have predicted the breadth of quality that has punctuated the calendar. It has been a year filled with high-achieving, ambitious games alongside shoestring indie gems. And the good news Read more ...
graham.rickson
Does classical music still matter? Of course it does – sample any one of these ten discs and discover why. All of them are available as CDs as well as downloads – the classical CD shop may be almost extinct, but the physical product refuses to die.CPE Bach: Symphonies Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment/Rebecca Miller (Signum)You wonder what facial expressions JS Bach might have pulled when listening to these five symphonies composed by his second son Carl Philipp Emmanuel, whose career blossomed during a 28-year spell under the employ of Frederick the Great in Berlin. These short Read more ...