Reviews
igor.toronyilalic
You can't ever expect immediate liftoff from a rusty old Lada. Spluttering, shaking and rattling make up as much of the first few minutes of the experience as that of actually moving. But then, before you know it, you're halfway to Plovdiv, and you wonder what you were complaining about. It's what happened last night with Libor Pešek's Czech National Symphony Orchestra. Juddering through the first two pieces (the Polonaise from Dvořák's Rusalka and Smetana's winning Polka from The Bartered Bride) at leaden tempi, the stringed body barely hanging on, the brass and percussion engine sputtering Read more ...
howard.male
A man on stilts may look precarious, but after a lifetime of occasionally seeing men on stilts we’ve become used to trusting that they are not, at any moment, going to topple over backwards and break their necks. So it was uniquely disconcerting – even slightly frightening - to see such a man (in the generic man-on stilts apparel of red and white striped trousers, multi-coloured waistcoat and waxed moustache) come crashing to the ground, inches from my feet, pulling a spotlight from the stage as he did so. A spotlight that, moment before, had been trained on the rather wonderful Vinicio Read more ...
ryan.gilbey
With a wackiness rating of 7.5 and a subject-matter (precocious teens coming of age over one long summer) that scores off the chart for over-familiarity, there seems every likelihood that Youth in Revolt will inspire audience revulsion. Luckily the film has on its side the unfussy directing style of Miguel Arteta (who has the warped buddy movie Chuck and Buck, as well as several episodes of Six Feet Under, in his favour), as well as a lively if not-as-smart-as-it-thinks-it-is script adapted by Gustin Nash from C D Payne’s novel (the first in the “Journals of Nick Twisp” series). The clincher Read more ...
Jasper Rees
What do our elected representatives in Westminster know? Apart from, clearly, how to fill in an expenses claim form. You can file all the usual complaints about Tower Block of Commons, a series in which MPs take up residence in sink estates. It uses the tired old Wife Swap format of sadistically throwing its subjects in at the deep end to watch them sink or swim. The editing is visibly manipulative. After every commercial break it recaps the entire story for its goldfish audience. And that title is, as per, naff. But strip away modern documentary grammar and after the first instalment you Read more ...
anne.billson
Who doesn't like watching funny-looking fish? There are some doozies in Océans, the new film from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard, the duo that brought us Winged Migration. There's one creature with a mug like the Elephant Man and another which disguises itself as a rock, all the better to leap out on its unsuspecting prey. There are jellyfish like mushrooms, anenomes which look like sinister black spiders and an invertebrate which looks like a floating cassock, dropped into the water by some absent-minded Pope.Like Winged Migration, this Franco-Spanish-Swiss coproduction gives us nature Read more ...
fisun.guner
Michael Landy, the artist who destroyed literally everything he owned in his 2001 Artangel project Break Down - birth certificate, Saab, treasured family photos, shirt off his back - finally followed that project up with another exercise in destruction, this time resulting in headlines too tempting, and way too satisfying, to resist: Modern Art is Rubbish.The Art Bin itself is a huge, see-through Perspex and steel container which takes up most of the space in the South London Gallery. At the far end there’s a staircase leading to a platform from which artists - or those who legally own an Read more ...
peter.quinn
The cliché which gets trotted out most often when describing Jan Garbarek's saxophone playing is his supposedly "icy" tone (Google “Garbarek” and “icy” and you'll see what I mean). As Garbarek's long-standing bassist Eberhard Weber amusingly points out in Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM, “I challenge the ladies and gentlemen of the press to think what they would write if Jan Garbarek wasn't Norwegian but Greek and his name was Garabekoulos! Then his music would immediately turn into the smouldering, sun-drenched sound of the scorching South.” Fair point, Eberhard.Hearing the latest Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The returns queue gets longer and so does the wait – considerably longer than the 69 minutes of programmed music in this the second of the Daniel Barenboim Beethoven/Schoenberg series. But what a satisfying two–course meal it was: Schoenberg’s “transfigured night” of desire and confession, Verklärte Nacht, and Beethoven’s grandest piano concerto, No 5, “The Emperor”. Two perfect pieces in dramatic juxtaposition and the reassuring feeling that nobody on the planet knows them better or is more acutely aware of their importance in the greater scheme of things than the man whose hands were Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Maybe it’s because he’s from Lancashire, home of some of Britain’s finest comics. Maybe it’s because he is a very physical performer and just looks the part. Maybe it’s because he “has funny bones”, as several commentators have remarked. Whatever the reason for Lee Mack’s success, he is simply a very funny comedian and, that rare thing, one who makes his audiences cry with laughter.Mack is an old pro (although he’s only 40) and started in comedy as a bluecoat at Pontin’s. Mack tells a beautifully crafted joke about his comic origins (which, like much of his “true stories”, may or may not be Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was a bit like the Ghost of Labour Past at Channel 4’s screening of this biopic of Mo Mowlam at BAFTA a couple of weeks ago. A cohort of party veterans turned out, including Charles Clarke, Neil Kinnock and Adam Ingram (a close ally of Mowlam’s and played by Gary Lewis in the film). There was even a brief introductory talk by "Batty" Hattie Harman, recalling how she first met Mowlam at Westminster. What a thrill that must have been for Mo.The star of the piece, Julie Walters, admits that she has become so disillusioned with politicians that she doesn’t know if she can bear to vote for any Read more ...
David Nice
There are still pockets of musical snobs who want to keep Elgar's two symphonies for the English, and off the worldwide roll call of orchestral masterpieces. Yet a steady line of international conductors - from Solti and Svetlanov to Haitink and Previn - has proved them the adventurous equal of anniversary composer Mahler's symphonic giants. Now Vladimir Ashkenazy joins the ranks. Elgar may not yet be quite in his bloodstream in the same way as Rachmaninov and Sibelius, but in yesterday afternoon's concert there was enough love for the complex composer's Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Whoever said it was better to journey than to arrive might have been thinking of Sibelius. The arrivals can be pretty spectacular – as here in Osmo Vänskä's tremendous account of the Second Symphony – but the getting there – or not – is what this music is all about. When Vänskä conducts Sibelius he doesn’t just traverse the musical landscape, he inhabits it, breathing it in, feeling its pull, overawed at the threshold of where sound becomes silence and vice versa. He is Sibelius’ eternal Wanderer. Barenboim may have stolen the column inches this week but Vänskä has stolen hearts and minds. Read more ...