Reviews
Hanna Weibye
Once, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was all about penniless students presenting avant-garde plays to audiences of three in church halls. These people still come, but now they compete for attention with professional production companies who, it’s to be supposed, make a decent whack of money from their three weeks in Scotland’s tourist-jammed capital.Australian contemporary circus outfit Circa are in the latter camp, spending this year’s Fringe with a prime 7pm spot in the McEwan Hall, the largest venue used by successful Fringe promoters Underbelly. At £16.50 for an hour-long performance, Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Mid-week at 9pm has always struck me as the perfect televisual sweet spot. It’s not so close to the weekend that you’re likely to want to go out, but enough of the week is done that it seems right to put your feet up and relax with a glass of wine and some exciting new drama or challenging documentary. Or, if you’re Channel 4, an hour on the 'professional pets' that the internet has helped launch to viral fame.Of course, advertisers recognised the purchase power of 'cute' long before Grumpy Cat and her ilk were but a twinkle in YouTube’s eye; with the Andrex Puppy and Dulux mascot being only Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
Dance as an art form doesn’t have a great track record in social and historical commentary. The endless grey areas, not to mention the complicated details, of history really require words to do them justice. Flamenco, of course, has words, but it’s still a highly emotive art form, one you might think unlikely to produce a subtle take on the theme of homeland. But 72-year old Paco Peña is not only one of the greatest living flamenco guitarists, he’s also a great producer, putting on thoughtful shows with wonderful performers from other traditions, seemingly revelling in the artistic richness Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Disney's latest is a film which must have itself represented a hell of a pitch. Based on a true story, it's basically Slumdog Millionaire meets Jerry Maguire - two films that attracted ample awards-interest and that prompted cascades of cash, like crunchy autumn leaves to be raked up by the sackful. Million Dollar Arm finds a hard-nosed sports agent travelling to India in search of the next baseball sensation, his method of selection - the titular talent contest.Jon Hamm makes the transition to the big screen lead look easy, usefully channelling his televisual alter-ego Don Draper to play JB Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Steen Raskopoulos has hit the ground running with his debut show; it was nominated for a Foster's Edinburgh Comedy Award (best newcomer) at the Fringe earlier this month, after he won Sydney Comedy Festival 2013 and Melbourne International Comedy Festival 2014’s best newcomer gongs.I’m Wearing Two Suits Because I Mean Business is a very fine hour of sketch and character comedy. Steen ("short for Steeeeeeeeen") Raskopoulos does indeed come on stage wearing two jackets and then strips off from the waist up. He persuades members of the audience to slather him in sunscreen lotion – which they do Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Taylor Kitsch’s doomed film career continues with this trite but good natured Canadian mash-up of Doc Hollywood and Waking Ned. Just like in major box office failure John Carter, Kitsch finds himself dumped in a foreign, mysterious land but the strange inhabitants are far more welcoming in the small harbour village of Tickle Head, where he could prove to be their saviour.It’s dark days in this fishing village, where the men line-up to collect their welfare cheques instead of heading off to sea. They are in need of jobs, which are offered in the form of a petrochemical reprocessing plant Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
About 10 minutes into the Brahms Third Symphony I wanted to check a name in the Budapest Festival Orchestra’s programme. I dared to turn a page. Bad idea. Such preternatural stillness had settled over the sold-out Royal Albert Hall that the gesture could probably have been spotted from the balcony. A motionless, virtually breathless audience is a rarity even at the Proms, where quality of listening is venerated; still, to hold around 6000 people quite so rapt with attention is an extraordinary skill in orchestra and conductor. But then, the Budapest Festival Orchestra and Iván Fischer are no Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Since Big Brother, Channel 4 has become expert at selecting naively self-promoting members of the public, and rubbing their unsuspecting apple cheeks into choice and unsavoury anatomical and psychological corners, for general public amusement. The title of this series suggests only a cosmetic variation on that theme, the question merely being whether it’s Islamists, Russian separatists or the weather that gets them first.In fact, the surprise of this series so far (though there’s still time for disaster...) is how lovely everything is. The scenery is unspeakably beautiful, they’re doing some Read more ...
Hanna Weibye
First, confessions. I’m the dance critic here at theartsdesk. Yes, this is a review of a concert performance of an opera, and no, I haven’t picked up a detailed knowledge of Rossini’s oeuvre as a byproduct of my education in pirouettes and Pina Bausch. I attended last night’s concert as a common or garden punter, and a chance one at that, taking a ticket to save wasting it after its original owner had to give it up because of a work commitment.Alexandra wrote a piece the other week about what opera has to offer the under-30s. Though I’m far from an opera novice, I am in that demographic and I Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Returning to the small town you grew up in after a spell in the big city can often be problematic. Old friends now think you’re a big shot. The familiar is seen in a new light, and not necessarily a good one. There’s a sense that the ties which have been slackened might be irrevocably sheared. In Mystery Road, Aaron Pedersen’s Jay Swan is a cop back in outback Queensland, in north-east Australia, after training. Now a detective, he quickly finds it’s sink or swim.But that’s not his only problem. As an Aboriginal, he’s subjected to racism. He’s one of what’s called “this dark breed.” And as a Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
The first of this year's two Proms by the Budapest Festival Orchestra had looked like a rather strange confection, on paper at least. With eleven scheduled contributions, and only two of them destined to make it into double figures, its timings had even given it a passing resemblance to a short but eventful cricket innings (there were also three unprogrammed extra items, but more of those later). The evening's programme, which ranged through the centuries from Mozart and Schubert up to the 1930s and Kodály, by way of one piece by Dvořák and four from the Strauss family, showed off a Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
There’s no rest for the wicked and corrupt in Frank Miller’s sequel to Sin City which sees him team up once again with Robert Rodriguez. A series of uninspired but visually alluring vignettes play out demanding you to question what came before and why such a foul follow-up has taken over nine years to come to fruition.Three stories based on the hard-boiled graphic novels of Frank Miller that date back to the 1990s (with a little new material thrown in) are told via the monochrome, highly stylised images that we first saw back in 2005. Johnny (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) has a death wish and a Read more ...