Reviews
Adam Sweeting
Sidse Babett Knudsen, alias the absurdly photogenic Danish Statsminister Birgitte Nyborg, provoked gasps at the Nordicana festival in London last June when she revealed that she was no longer Prime Minister in series three. And indeed, as the curtain rose on episode one, we could see that she was not.Instead, the ex-premier had cashed in her political prestige for one of those nebulous but lucrative roles as roving speech-maker, consultant and corporate board-member. We observed a svelte and designer-chic Nyborg helicoptering in to the Hong Kong headquarters of a pharmaceutical company to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: I am the Center – Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990A landmark reissue either retells a familiar story in a new way or tells an unfamiliar story in a way that fascinates. In both cases, the annotation, packaging, sequencing and track list has to be exemplary. I am the Center succeeds on all counts.This beguiling, extraordinary, perception-altering two-CD set (also available as three albums) is the first widely available collection to assess and reassess the music which accompanied America’s espousal of a fresh form of spiritualty in the aftermath of the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
“Show Me Love” by Robin S was a monster pop-rave crossover hit in 1990. Most of the crowd at Chase & Status’s Brighton date would have either not been born or in nappies gnawing Duplo bricks when it had its moment in the sun, yet they sing along en masse and roar approval as the band’s female diva, Moko, belts it out, jumping around in precariously stacked heels.That she follows it with the band’s most recent hit, “Count On Me”, and it sounds as if both were recorded at the same time, drives home a point: on the radio, via their hits, Chase & Status could be perceived as a cheesy Read more ...
Mark Valencia
As farewell galas go it was less an obituary, more a celebration of an artist who has earned every whoop of the rock-star welcome she received from an adoring crowd. Dame Felicity Lott – "Flott" to her friends (i.e. pretty well everyone present) – was cheered to the echo by her fans and eulogised at either end of the evening by Wigmore Hall director John Gilhooly. The recital she gave in between defied criticism and made a nonsense of any attempt at an abbreviated star rating because (saving pianist Graham Johnson’s presence) this was a one-star event – and, like all astral bodies, Flott was Read more ...
peter.quinn
Harp glissandos, trilling flutes, the heft of a swinging brass section. Yes, last night's Jazz Voice once again kick-started the EFG London Jazz Festival in typically exuberant fashion. Arranged, scored and conducted by the indefatigable Guy Barker, its epoch-spanning celebration of jazz-related anniversaries, birthdays and milestones was hosted for the second time by Victoria Wood.First performed in the 1953 film Calamity Jane by Doris Day, Clare Teal's terrific interpretation of the much-recorded standard “Secret Love” provided a textbook lesson in phrasing and singing a legato melodic Read more ...
David Nice
Now here’s a funny thing, possums. Back in 1990 when one great Australian Dame, Joan Sutherland, gave her farewell performance, another, a certain housewife superstar from the Melbourne suburb of Moonee Ponds, seemed closer to retirement age.Now La Stupenda is no more, Dame Edna is a gigastar and it’s her turn to shrill a gladdie-waving goodbye to her adoring public. She doesn’t look a day older, nary a hair out of place in that immaculate lilac coiffure. Daring to upstage her in a final speech is manager Barry Humphries, still with his hand in the till while Edna gives all for her art Read more ...
graham.rickson
Brahms: The Symphonies, Orchestral works Gewandhausorchester /Riccardo Chailly (Decca)Riccardo Chailly's sensational modern-instrument Beethoven cycle hasn't been bettered, and this Brahms symphony set repeats the trick. Pretty much everything is judged to perfection. Brahms never included metronome marks in his music. Chailly recognises that “this ensures a certain amount of licence", but is anxious to emphasise what the notes call "an uninterrupted evolutionary flow". Keep changing gear, and the music will grind to a halt, in other words. That never happens here. Chailly's swiftish Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
The Counsellor is a cinematic room divider: some people will like it, saying it is stylish and daring. Others will find it truncated, slick and pretentious. Whichever room you end up in, The Counsellor has a tang of its own. This violent, colorful thriller overflows with bravado and, like matching collars and cuffs, identical foreboding. The motto here is that bad things happen to bad people but when they're bad people we sort of like, it's different.Ridley Scott’s latest thriller is the first original screenplay written by novelist Cormac McCarthy. The author, responsible for No Country For Read more ...
Simon Munk
The Ratchet & Clank series has, largely, been a brilliant reminder of how much fun videogames can be. It neither had lofty ambitions of narrative and thematic depth, nor the headache-inducing sturm und drang of the current crop of action games. Sadly, this last entry in the series goes out with both too much bang and too much backstory.The main enemies, a pair of orphaned twins, apparently now need to have a mawkish backstoryBefore, Ratchet, the last-remaining Lombax space cat and his backpack-come-robot-buddy Clank, toured the galaxy fighting largely comedic crime. The series' key points Read more ...
David Nice
Among the diaspora of younger-generation Russian or Russian-trained pianists, there are at least four whose intellect and poetry match their technique. Three whose craft was honed at the Moscow or St Petersburg Conservatories – Yevgeny Sudbin, Alexander Melnikov and the inexplicably less well-feted Rustem Hayroudinoff – have made England their home. Boris Giltburg - the youngest of the group with a fifth, Denis Kozhukhin, close on his heels - left Moscow for Tel Aviv when he was a child and has had a different training. Coltish and capricious at times, his imagination may yet turn out to be Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
Today’s special preview of the impending 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who finally filled in some of what happened in the gap between Paul McGann’s 1996 made-for-TV movie and the show’s 2005 televisual regeneration (Big Finish audios notwithstanding, obviously). So it was appropriate that today’s other Who-related event, a one-off tie-in documentary fronted by Professor Brian Cox, began by doing its best to bridge the gap between its presenter’s time in 90s dance-pop band D:Ream and his own unlikely regeneration as one of TV science’s most famous personalities.There are plenty of aspects Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Dom Hemingway (Jude Law) is addicted to his own voice, whether he’s soliloquising about his cock, his safe-cracking, his hangover, or telling the psychotic Russian gangster whose houseguest he is how much he wants to fuck his girlfriend. His ornately foul-mouthed verbosity exhausts even himself as he explodes through life, punching, bragging, drinking, drugging and self-destructing, skin puffy, teeth stained, face scarred, gut flabby and eyes staring with fierce confusion, constantly startled by the latest disaster he’s inexplicably ploughed into. “I’m a cunt!” Dom keeps realising.And he is. Read more ...