Reviews
Sue Hubbard
Artists love a good revolution. The social upheaval, the bubbling up of new ideas and the breaking down of old ones, attracts them like flies to fly paper. The Mexican revolution was no exception. During the years 1910-1940, Mexico attracted large numbers of international intellectuals and artists, seduced by the political maelstrom and apparent freedoms that beckoned in this culturally diverse and varied land.For many European artists Mexico seemed like a primitive (if somewhat fictional) Nirvana, with its stunning scenery, indigenous culture and mysticism that fed the modernist appetite for Read more ...
caspar.gomez
The smell is like a squidgy hash spliff marinated in hickory-smoked barbecue sauce. There’s an additional top note of tangy, excited human musk and a hint of vinegary organic waste. By the weekend’s end this Parfum de Glaston will have infused everything, from unworn clothes to the tent to even skin and hair. It will take days to shift, permeating the pores as completely as this temporary city of madness sandblasts the mind. But let’s not get carried away before we’ve begun. To peak too early would be a classic rookie mistake.Thursday 27 JuneThings begin, then, on a sunny A303 that turns Read more ...
Sam Marlowe
A champagne cocktail with a hefty dash of bitters, Jonathan Kent’s production of this exquisite Noël Coward comedy of impossible passions is as wince-inducing as it is delightfully effervescent. A hit at Chichester Festival Theatre last autumn, it sees Toby Stephens slip suavely into the role of Elyot Chase opposite a sloe-eyed Anna Chancellor as his ex-wife, Amanda.From the moment the two collide on their adjoining balconies at the French resort where both are honeymooning with new spouses, the atmosphere fizzes with sexual tension. For all their elegance, all the artfulness of their verbal Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Teamwork, as the song once said, makes the dream work. Homo sapiens knows this, if not quite by nature, then at least by nurture. Turns out that there are some chimpanzees in Leipzig which are all over the team thing too. Offered the chance to pull together on a simple mechanism to retrieve a nut – one each – two chimps will work in tandem to make it happen.Perhaps these are just highly efficient Teutonic chimps who uniquely understand the meaning of Vorsprung durch Technik. But no. That stat about sharing 98 per cent of our DNA with chimpanzees? It seems the ability to cooperate is part of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Off we jolly well go.” With that, The Flamin’ Groovies’s Chris Wilson announced the arrival of “Shake Some Action”, the band’s classic evocation of rock ‘n’ roll swagger. In 2013, 40 years after it was first recorded, it's still magnificent, a headlong rush of chiming, descending chords and soaring vocals. “If you don't dig what I say, then I will go away,” sang Wilson. And without a mass audience, The Flamin’ Groovies had gone away. Wilson left in 1981 and the band fizzled out in 1992. Now, they’re back.Beginning last night with a ragged version of 1973’s “Let Me Rock” was a statement. This Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Blondie are one of a handful of bands capable of producing a set list which renders rational critical argument all but obsolete. If they play the hits and they play them straight and true, there’s not really much to complain about. Last night in Edinburgh the six-piece line-up (half original members, half relative newbies) played (most of) the hits, and well, but let’s break it down to specifics.Five things you want to see at a Blondie concert1. Debbie Harry. A vision in peach with voice and sass intact, she remains a tough-but-tender front woman par excellence with charisma to burn. 2. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The ancients teach us that after hubris comes nemesis, and Luther's writer/creator Neil Cross has taken the lesson to heart. The big question hanging over this third series is, can the bullish DCI John Luther continue to hunt villains in his own headstrong, politically-incorrect fashion, or will he be brought down by snarling Detective Super George Stark, a bitter and vengeful man hauled out of retirement to bring Luther his come-uppance? He's played with spittle-flecked animosity by David O'Hara, and you can't help hoping that at some point Luther will drop him off the top of a tall building Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
This movie has a couple of key advantages - it doesn't have any serial killers or zombies in it. It also pays the audience the compliment of assuming that it has a certain amount of intelligence, enough at least to appreciate being bamboozled by its relentless cleverness and convoluted trickery.It's a strange beast, though. I thoroughly enjoyed about 70 per cent of it as it took off on a whirling thrill-ride which seemed to defy the laws of physics and probability. But perhaps inevitably, all those spinning plates came crashing back to earth as director Louis Leterrier struggled to tie Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Music and art have been intertwined for millennia, the static, frozen and soundless moment of paint capturing the feeling and the meaning of ephemeral time-based music. And nowhere can the act of making music have so thoroughly infiltrated a society at all levels than the Golden Age of Dutch culture in the 17th century.Music is emblematic of time passing and its accompaniment, mortalityMusic was part of the entertainment in brothels, bawdy houses, taverns, inns, part of the energetic goings-on of the working classes, and also profoundly integrated into the life and mores of the burgeoning Read more ...
Toby Saul
Paul Delvaux, the subject of a modest exhibition at the Blain Di Donna gallery in Mayfair, was JG Ballard’s favourite painter. The writer prized him for the creation of a complete world. Ballard found that world curious and inviting. He said he could spend hours gazing at the pictures wishing he could escape into their alternate reality. Ballard was made of sterner stuff than me. The places Delvaux paints seem quiet but harsh, not much happens but they feel menacing. They are sparsely populated and lonely. On the other hand, Ballard had a point about how compelling and intriguing he made his Read more ...
Emma Dibdin
Sofia Coppola has become known for lovingly sketching out the tribulations of the rich and famous, and reviews of her 2010 Chateau Marmont-set angst fest Somewhere made it clear that critics’ patience with that particular seam had waned. But it has become easy to forget Coppola’s debut film in all this, because it doesn’t fit the pattern.While The Bling Ring deals overtly with fame and the desperate pursuit of it, emotionally it has more in common with 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, a wistful study of disaffected girls whose suicidal behaviour seemed almost involuntary, almost predetermined. Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
"Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park" is a wonderfully grand name for the venue for this summer's Hard Rock Calling festival, but the reality doesn't quite match up. Rather than basking in the glory (and shiny new stadium architecture) of Mo and Jessica's triumphs from last summer, music fans found themselves a few hundred yards away on a drab swathe of stony wasteland, temporarily covered with artificial grass. Still, at least the sun blazed down and they'd got the beer tent sorted, with thirsty punters bundled in and out, several banknotes lighter, at unprecedented speed.Bruce Springsteen has Read more ...