Reviews
Thomas H. Green
Let’s not get carried away. The news, announced at the end of September, that vinyl sales generated more money than the combined income of Spotify, Vevo and YouTube’s free services sent waves of celebration through the record-loving community. $166 million vs. $222 million – yaaaaaay! Vinyl sales up 52% on last year and now accounting for a third of all physical sales – yaaaaaay again! But the truth is that paid subscribers to streaming services – as opposed to the “free” advert-funded model - raised over a billion dollars in income. Google “Vinyl sales now 1970s” and there are plenty of Read more ...
Marianka Swain
It's been the most heavily signposted illness in drama history. A twinge here. An "Oof" there. Chekhov's roiling guts. And tonight, His Lordship's mystery complaint finally took centre stage, in a scene that led one to wonder exactly how to remove three pints of aristocratic blood from a pristine white tablecloth.The latest shoehorned-in visitor from history, marvellously mustachioed health minister Neville Chamberlain (Rupert Frazer, pictured below) was on hand to witness Lord Grantham's (Hugh Bonneville) spectacular horror movie regurgitation: Alien's iconic John Hurt chestburst Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Here comes the President, and with him a timely reminder about what the Chinese have been digging up over the past 40 years or so to further demonstrate their exceptional imperial history over the past two millennia. Treasures of the Jade Empire rather breathlessly told us of revelatory excavations of the tombs of the Han Emperors, and the regional kings they nominated to act as surrogate rulers over their gigantic empire – its boundaries closely related to China today. The parallel argument to the archaeology was the achievements of the Han in unifying a vast landmass, in which Han Chinese Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Any number of puzzling and fantastical stories were told by Alberto Giacometti in the construction of a personal mythology that helped secure his reputation as an archetypal artist of the avant-garde. Less heroic than the oft-quoted accounts of his transformative, visionary experiences, the story of his return to Paris after the Second World War is no less poignant, nor significant for all that. Having stowed his most recent works under the floorboards, Giacometti left his studio in 1941 returning four years later to find it – miraculously – just as he had left it. Due less to some Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Little Bob Story: Off the Rails + Live in ‘78Aki Kaurismäki’s 2011 film Le Havre features a cameo from a hard-rocking band fronted by a grey-haired gentleman who crops up elsewhere in the action. He is Roberto Piazza, and trades under the name Little Bob. Although born in Italy, his family moved to France in 1958 when he was 13. Integral to and at one with France’s perennial love affair with classic rock ‘n’ roll, he formed the band Little Bob Story in Le Havre in 1974.Kaurismäki recognised that the wilful Little Bob is the genuine article: a man forever marinated in the spirit of high- Read more ...
David Nice
Kurt Cobain’s “Smells like Teen Spirit’ cued a realistic song and drink routine for Chekhov’s Three Sisters in a hit-and-miss update by director Benedict Andrews. This one, with a Puccini soundtrack unsupportively conducted by Xian Zhang, smells more like routine spirit with a couple of jolts along the way, a sludgy requiem for drug-fuelled twenty-somethings.Moving forward in time the action of Puccini’s inspiration, Henri Murger’s still fresh and authentic memories of bohemian youth in 1830s Paris, is more the rule than the exception now. The late Steven Pimlott did it with more infill at Read more ...
Matthew Wright
You would expect a galactically-themed album like Astronautilus to blast off into extra-terrestrial airiness. The fifth album from west-country jazz-rock space cadets Get The Blessing scorched some earth at its launch in Shoreditch last night, yet the battery of horns, bewitching, asymmetric drums and repeating patterns of surging melody felt grounded and earthy.They played nearly all of the new album, with a couple of old favourites, “OCDC” and “Cake Hole”. Their sound hasn’t, on the surface, changed all that much since their prize-winning 2008 debut All Is Yes. Drummer Clive Deamer and Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
For an art form with a marked penchant for looking over its shoulder, it’s surprising how rarely ballet has exploited its own origins story – not least given the fabled opulence and style of its leading character. The Sleeping Beauty makes a nod to Louis XIV and the court of Versailles in its final moments, but in most ballet goers’ mental archive that’s just about it.Full marks to David Bintley, then, for turning a light on the Sun King and his love of dancing, and for recognising in the story a prime opportunity to create another rare thing: a glamorous showcase for the company’s men. Read more ...
aleks.sierz
On my way to see this show, I had to walk across Soho. No fewer than five people asked me for money; one was a real hassle. Yes, I know that the government says that the economy is booming, but the record number of homeless in the capital tell a very different story. Yes, I bumped into five of them in 15 minutes, although I know there are thousands more. And maybe one of them is Joanne.As these five short monologues, each of which is written by a different writer, illustrate, Joanne is a very troubled young woman. She is a self-harmer, and has just been released from prison. Outside she is Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Lance Armstrong's spectacular crash-and-burn makes for gripping stuff in The Program, the story of the sports legend-cum-druggie who cycled too close to the sun and went on to pay the hubris-laden price. And as a star vehicle for Ben Foster, Stephen Frears's latest film not only serves as a reminder of this director's singular way with actors (note the performances that have gone the Oscar route under his watch) but makes one wonder why his young American lead hasn't yet entered Hollywood's inner sanctum when he so clearly has the stuff.Armstrong's saga of disgrace-on-an-epic-scale isn't new Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Free as air, but there was a very heavy price to pay for his ecstatic exploration of the sky by the Cornwall painter Peter Lanyon, who died in 1964, aged just 46, as a result of injuries received in a gliding accident. The Courtauld Gallery is known for its series of original, incisive, acute and intense exhibitions taking a sharply focused view of one aspect of an artist’s work. Often these provide a revelation and so it is here.For Lanyon, who has fallen out of fashion as have several other significant figures of his generation of British artists, this is a very welcome examination of Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Yorgos Lanthimos is the director who reinvigorated Greek cinema with his dark, absurdist films Dogtooth and Alps. His English-language debut is even more off the charts, yet also the most familiar; after all, it is essentially a love story. The proposition of The Lobster is a future society where being single is regarded as a crime. Those found to be alone, even if they’re newly widowed like our hero, John (Colin Farrell), are arrested and despatched to a rural hotel, where they have 45 days to find a partner amongst the other guests. Punishment, for those who fail, is to be transformed Read more ...