Reviews
Jasper Rees
In 2009 Niels Arden Oplev sent a lightning bolt through the multiplexes with his adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It was only a matter of time before a magpie in Hollywood noticed. They duly went about the business of re-adapting the film for people who can’t read pesky subtitles, and now the director has been summoned over the water to make his English-language debut. Across from Sweden he’s brought a lucky charm in the form of Noomi Rapace, who in turn has brought Lisbeth Salander’s motivation: vengeance.Not that we know this quite from the start. Lonesome Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Down by the seaside, an array of rather lumpen large naked women are marching, posing, reclining, and even rolling over along the walls of the new Jerwood Gallery, delineated by William Scott (1913-1989). Scott’s centenary is being commemorated with an array of exhibitions and publications in Britain and America, and the market too is revving up with the publication of a four-volume catalogue of his oil paintings.He was born in Scotland, brought up in Northern Ireland, trained at the Belfast College of Art and the Royal Academy in London, and was part of those several generations of British Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Oh my goodness but that Mrs Carter knows how to entertain. Sparkles, glitter, flames, fireworks and costumes galore: The Mrs Carter Show had the lot and so much more. A tight eight-piece band, 10 dancers, three backing singers and extraordinary lighting effects - not to mention Beyoncé's honey voice, her sexy swagger and all-round bootyliciousness - made for a thrilling two hours in a cavernous space that she made feel almost intimate.Such intimacy, as afforded by the big screens either side of the stage, confirmed that there was no embarrassing Obama inauguration miming here; this was Read more ...
Nick Hasted
It’s the sort of New York summer week where the sidewalk melts. But in writer-director Adam Leon’s SXSW Grand Jury prize-winning cool breeze of a debut, the mood stays amiably balmy. It’s the tale of teenage Bronx graffiti artists Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington) who, disrespected at every turn by a tougher graffiti gang, decide to tag a legendarily impregnable, daffy holy grail: the sign that pops up at Mets baseball games when a home run’s scored. All that stands between them and graffiti immortality, Malcolm is convinced, is the $500 his contact inside the stadium Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Most theatre directors produce work which is visually the same as everyone else’s. Katie Mitchell doesn’t. Her plays are always brilliantly acted, highly atmospheric and often use film media in an amazing way. But she almost never works in this country any more. Scorned by the National Theatre, by the myopic critics (although loved by audiences), she now works mainly abroad. This production, first staged at the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin, is a perfect example of her genius.In August Strindberg’s Fröken Julie, written in 1888, the set is the kitchen of a country mansion, where on Midsummer’s Read more ...
Jasper Rees
“A bunch of beardies rooting around with trowels. On the lookout for shinbones and such. It’ll be knockout.” There will have been naysayers at the meeting when they first pitched the idea for a series about archaeology and yet nearly 20 years on Time Team is still with us. It seems the viewing public’s appetite for digging is not restricted to Titchmarsh. Mirabile dictu, as the Romans no doubt said when they dug up three wooden crosses under a temple of Venus in Jerusalem, thus inventing archaeology.Hence what might be considered overdue: a telly history of archaeology. This being telly Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Ellen Gallagher is obsessed by the issue of black cultural identity; but if that sounds tedious or tendentious, think again. She explores her theme in work that is so varied, so beautiful and so humorous that the furrow she ploughs seems more like an endless opportunity than a narrow limitation.Take the early paintings, for instance. From a distance they look like exquisite minimalist compositions – explorations in pure abstraction. Gallagher paints onto sheets of penmanship paper used by American schoolchildren when practising their handwriting. This underlying grid is enhanced by the thin Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
I’m not one to get misty-eyed over La bohème (unless it be a red mist of rage), but this second revival of Jonathan Miller’s production at English National Opera brought me closer than any yet to understanding the snuffling, lip-quivering reactions of those around me in the Coliseum stalls. And if it wasn’t exactly emotion that got me there, then perhaps it was something even better: sentimental delight in joyous, glorious music-making.La bohème has suffered more than most operas at the hands of clever directors and conceptual visions. But at this stage in his career Miller has nothing to Read more ...
Veronica Lee
What a line-up for a sitcom; three of our most accomplished actors - Ian McKellen, Derek Jacobi and Frances de la Tour – star, and the writers are the super-talented playwright Mark Ravenhill and Gary Janetti, who used to work on Will & Grace, one of the classiest comedies on American television in decades. And what do you get? Well, not quite the laugh fest that it might have been (or may yet become), but an opener that had a reasonable hit rate.Vicious is another back-to-the-future comedy, a one-room sitcom with two of the queeniest gay men to grace our screens since the dear departed Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Continuing its voyage through Scandinavia’s music, theartsdesk opens the latest chapter in Norway with Still Life With Eggplant, the 16th album from Trondheim’s prolific, long-lived, occasionally challenging and always vital Motorpsycho.Their last album, 2012’s The Death Defying Unicorn, was an orchestrated collaboration with jazz composer and musician Ståle Storløkken which was performed at Oslo’s opera house. The one before that, 2010’s Heavy Metal Fruit, included the 20-minute “Gullible's Travails” and was almost as musically elaborate as …Unicorn. Their new album, the magnificent Still Read more ...
Ismene Brown
I was trying to remember the last time a choreographer actually tried to make the audience smile in the past few months. Dance-lovers are suckers for guilt. They creep into the dark of their seat to be regaled by their share of the blame for the world’s wrongs, and creep home chastened, if not fully corrected (Rosas, Kylián, Schaufuss). Or else they are beaten about the head with the choreographer’s own personal shtick (Bausch, MacMillan, Petit). I know which I prefer.No venue is more a secular church for expiation than Sadler’s Wells, London's dance theatre. Last week it hosted two of the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Occasionally an ensemble cast comes along that makes you want to get down on your knees and give praise to the movie gods; A.C.O.D. (Adult Children of Divorce) has such a cast. The directorial debut of Stu Zicherman brings together Parks and Recreation stars Adam Scott and Amy Poehler and expertly tosses into the mix Oscar-nominee Richard Jenkins, along with bona-fide comic geniuses Jane Lynch and Catherine O'Hara. And that's just for starters.Scott plays the neurotic, cynical Carter, ever-the-peacemaker for his acrimoniously divorced parents (Jenkins and O'Hara): "You have turned a nine-year Read more ...