Reviews
Tom Birchenough
What a difference four days can make. Stammer School: Musharaf Finds His Voice took us on an emotional journey from deep frustration and pain towards something like triumph and hope. "Triumph" may seem a big word, but it was hard to think of a better one after the film’s final scene where the stammerers whose progress we had been following came out and spoke with confidence in public.The one we knew best was Musharaf Asghar from last year’s Channel 4 Educating Yorkshire, with its closing episode that showed the severe stammerer reading a poem out aloud to the school. He’d been coached and Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
Opening as it does on a frank, witty and somewhat extended discussion of female discharge, Obvious Child lets you know from the outset that it is every bit as uninterested in making nice as its blunt lead character. Jenny Slate is Donna, a late-twenties comedienne who drily mines her less-than-aspirational life and stagnant relationship for laughs during standup sets, only to be unceremoniously dumped one night when the boyfriend in question tires of being used as material. Immediately, then, writer-director Gillian Robespierre is doing something compelling with the question of what Read more ...
Simon Munk
CounterSpy looks brilliant. This stealth-action adventure delivers a perfect Man From U.N.C.L.E. spy aesthetic in videogame form. And largely delivers on the premise in gameplay terms too.Two superpowers are locked in a pointless and potentially genocidal arms race. Enter C.O.U.N.T.E.R. – on the surface, this sneaky outside agency is there to disarm both sides and stop them from blowing up the moon. Yes, the moon.CounterSpy steals its aesthetics from 60s and 70s spy TV thrillers such as Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Bond films. The US side's levels are filled to bursting with hordes of dimwitted Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
The Edinburgh Festival reserved its biggest operatic event for last. From St Petersburg, the Mariinsky Opera brought a production of Berlioz’s Les Troyens that could truly be described as epic: a stellar cast, a vast trompe d’oeil set, and an overall duration comfortably over five hours. A large audience greeted it enthusiastically, but not ecstatically. Maybe exhaustion had set in: there were yawns and smiles in equal measure on the way out.Les Troyens is really two operas. In the first two acts Troy falls to the Greeks after the naïve defenders ignore the prophecies of doom from Cassandra Read more ...
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 ...