Reviews
caroline.boyle
East coast haar seeping into sun-drenched streets – familiar Edinburgh monuments disappearing dreamlike under blankets of mist, vibrant colour draining from the landscape as the city transformed into its more usual symphony in grey. The dramatic change in weather during the first weekend of the Edinburgh Art Festival has mirrored the overwhelming experience of one of this year’s major exhibitions.Van Gogh to Kandinsky: Symbolist Landscape in Europe, 1880–1910 is a joint project between the National Galleries of Scotland, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Ateneum Art Museum in Helsinki Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s a standard dilemma in film. What to do with the body? In this case, the answer can be seen coming but when it does, it isn’t one that could have occurred outside the world created for the otherwise all too generic Jackpot.Although based on a story by the Norwegian thriller writer Jo Nesbø and co-scripted by him, Jackpot (Arme Riddere) isn’t hard-boiled like his Harry Hole books or intrigue-laden like Headhunters, his novel also recently adapted for film. Instead, it sidesteps depth in favour of a cartoon-style punchiness. Despite it’s washed-out palette, Jackpot isn’t brooding Nordic Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
American critics haven't been too kind to Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series about a cable TV news programme, for a variety of reasons. At least they had the advantage of understanding the intricate partisan infighting of American politics which forms the show's backdrop, and which will be baffling to many British viewers. On the other hand, nobody is likely to have much trouble recognising the A Few Good Men view of history familiar from previous Sorkin milestones such as The West Wing and, uh, A Few Good Men.This time around, Sorkin's hero is Will McAvoy, a former lawyer turned veteran TV anchor Read more ...
Laura Silverman
The curators encourage you to come to Bush Bazaar with an open mind to explore the value of theatre. But I found this cluttered evening a lesson in the value of saying no. Twenty companies – 100 emerging artists in all – have taken over the building to sell their wares, including a dinner party, a cleansing treatment and one to one with Justin Bieber (hard to resist). After paying £10 to get in, you decide what to see and how much more to pay the artists. Sometimes before their show.Theatre Delicatessen have devised this work in response to the global financial crisis. They want to Read more ...
Jasper Rees
In the end only Robert Altman really knew how to do it: to take a spread of characters and somehow knit their stories together into a satisfactory whole. When filmmakers have attempted it in recent years they’ve tended to self-importance – Paul Haggis in Crash, Alejandro González Iñárritu in Babel – or risibility – Richard Curtis in Love, Actually. And now here comes 360, which riffs on La Ronde to daisy-chain the lives of several characters across the planet. Bring your passport.You’ve got to hand it to director Fernando Meirelles and writer Peter Morgan: they’ve aimed high with a story Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Why so many empty seats at last night’s Prom? Bringing together several choruses, a percussion-augmented orchestra, dancers, actors, rock-band and children’s choir, Leonard Bernstein’s Mass is surely a Proms dream – a genuinely eclectic work with something for just about everybody. But even as some 11 different Welsh ensembles sung, jived, clapped and shouted for our entertainment yesterday, there was no getting away from the issues with Bernstein’s ageing, mongrel score.Part oratorio, part music-theatre, part liturgical rite, Mass is an awkward work to assimilate, let alone stage. Unlike the Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Camille O'Sullivan: Changeling, Assembly Rooms *****The Assembly Rooms may have reopened for this year's Fringe following a very swanky refurb, but someone obviously forgot to put sufficient thought into the practicalities of getting people in and out during the festival. The opening night of Camille O’Sullivan’s brief sold-out run started 40 minutes late after a chaotic queuing system apparently devised in tribute to MC Escher left much of the crowd – which, thrillingly, included Les Dennis – more than a little testy.It’s testament to O’Sullivan’s charisma and gifts as a performer that Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Ravel composed only two operas, both one-acters, widely separated in time, superficially very different, but both in a way about the same thing: naughtiness. In L’Heure espagnole (1911), the clockmaker’s wife, Conceptión, entertains a succession of would-be lovers in her husband’s absence. In L’Enfant et les sortilèges (1924), the little boy who won’t do his homework, who smashes the teapot, pulls the cat’s tail and rips the wallpaper, suddenly finds his victims coming to life and scaring him to death.Naughtiness, rather than wickedness: Torquemada, the clockmaker, turns a blind eye on his Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Trojan Presents Freedom Sounds, a Celebration of Jamaican MusicKieron TylerThree-and-a-half minutes in, a heavily reverbed drum suddenly rattles and the track heads off into outer space. Morse-code bass dominates, the hi-hat swishes and odd bits of the full instrumental track waft in and out. Something like a home fire alarm bleeps. “None Shall Escape the Judgement” begins normally enough, a mid-tempo two-step reggae shuffler with a swooning, devotional vocal from Johnny Clarke. But really, it's two songs in one, that second half the creation of sonic auteur King Tubby and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Elgar: Enigma Variations, Cockaigne Overture, Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1-5 Royal Philharmonic Orchestra/Barry Wordsworth (RPO)Never underestimate the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Less generously funded than the other major London orchestras, most of their concerts are now given in the lovely Cadogan Hall near Sloane Square and not the Festival Hall. They soared under the directorship of Daniele Gatti, and are currently led by Charles Dutoit. And while their string sound is occasionally less refulgent than that of the LSO or Philharmonia, their brass and winds are consistently Read more ...
Jasper Rees
There’s a lot of sport about at the minute, and those of us who get off on it are filling our boots. So it’s perhaps not the ideal moment to release a sporting documentary, however rousing, however laudable, especially one about that most unOlympic of team games, US football. If Undefeated makes a legitimate claim on the attention, it’s because it is all about legacy, that ubiquitous buzz word of London 2012.The drama of this improving documentary unfolds in a working-class area of North Memphis, Tennessee, which has entered a downward spiral after the closure of the local industrial plant. Read more ...
charlotte.gardner
What better work for Harry Bicket and The English Concert to perform at the Proms than Bach's joyous Mass in B Minor. Joyous firstly because of the music itself, with its vast stylistic and emotional range. Joyous secondly because, despite the intense scholarship to which Bach and his music have been subjected over the years, its genesis remains unusually shrouded in mystery for such a major work.While it seems likely that Bach viewed the work as a summation and climax of his life's music, that's about as much as we can guess. There's no evidence to suggest that he performed it as a whole Read more ...