Reviews
bruce.dessau
Early yesterday evening on that bastion of biting cultural analysis The One Show, Andy McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark was reflecting on how his band was inspired by German techno-wizards Kraftwerk. If OMD were the children of Florian Schneider und co, then Delphic, led by another singing bassist James Cook, must be the grandchildren.This fresh-faced Mancunian combo - a studio trio augmented when gigging by drummer Dan Hadley – has been tipped as one of the bands of the year, having come third in the recent BBC Sound of 2010 poll, won in 2008 by Adele and in 2009 by Little Read more ...
Veronica Lee
For those of us brought up on classic Disney animation - from the first, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, through The Jungle Book and Lady and the Tramp to, more recently, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast - it’s sad to think that a whole generation of children have seen animated films only through CGI and Pixar. But now comes The Princess and the Frog, Disney’s first entirely 2D, hand-drawn animation since 2002, which, with its sumptuous drawings, soft colours and Jazz Age setting, could almost be seen as a retro exercise. That is underlined by the fact that the film’s co-directors are Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you were looking for a director for the movie version of Edge of Darkness, you'd have thought you couldn't do better than Martin Campbell, who made the original 1985 series for BBC television. He's now a bona fide Hollywood ace, with a string of major TV credits and hit movies like Casino Royale and the Zorro flicks to his name. But not even a Tinseltown budget can bribe lightning to strike twice, and whatever fortuitous combination of timing and subject matter turned the BBC series into an instant historic event, it's difficult to imagine that happening to its big-screen incarnation. Read more ...
sue.steward
In another lifetime, I walked into the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town through a portal into a new world: the cavernous dancehall was packed, and the "audience" being choreographed by cross-rhythms of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian ancestry in an atmosphere created by a 17-year-old jazz funk DJ called Gilles Peterson. I was witnessing the dawn of the New Jazz Age.The mostly black dancers wore baggy suits, white shirts and braces like the 1930s jivers at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, the Forties mambo-niks at Manhattan’s legendary Palladium Ballroom, and hats like the Jamaican rude boys in (London) Soho Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Early on in Michael Samuels’ unremittingly sombre film about Winnie Mandela, the star-crossed heroine made the observation that being married to Nelson meant you were also married to “the struggle”, and would inevitably end up in Nelson’s shadow. So it proved. Even as she went to meet Nelson (David Harewood) as he was finally released after 27 years in jail, Winnie (Sophie Okonedo) was advised to learn from the example of Prince Philip and the way he walks dutifully one step behind the Queen.With her husband sweating it out either in hiding or subsequently in Robben Island prison, Winnie was Read more ...
gerard.gilbert
Are we British turning French, shrugging our shoulders at political sex scandals? Or did Major and Prescott finally made the idea of the pants-down MP seem so grotesquely mundane that we have had no option but to laugh and concentrate on their second homes instead? Either way, for a good old-fashioned sex scandal these days you need to travel to America, where politicians still espouse (a word, ironically, from the same Latin root as “spouse”) family values to fundamentalist voters.The cleverly scripted and thoroughly entertaining new US drama series The Good Wife could have been inspired by Read more ...
Joe Muggs
Nico Muhly didn't have to work much to puncture any atmosphere of classical recital formality at the Roundhouse: he only needed to be himself. Young, slightly dorky and very camp, wearing a black garment that blurred the boundaries between cardigan and bathrobe, and bantering lightly with the audience, the Vermont-born New York-based composer gave the impression that he couldn't take himself too seriously if he tried.His performance began with lightness of touch, too, with a recital of the solo piano piece “Mad Rush” by Philip Glass, for whom Muhly often conducts, arranges and plays piano. It Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Only Fools and Horses, whose last new episode was broadcast to the traditionally bloated Christmas audience in 2003, has enjoyed several kinds of afterlife. It lives on lexically, in the form of the Peckhamspeak inherited by its viewers – “cushty” and “luvly jubbly”, “plonker” and “dipstick”. It is also frequently exhumed in clips packages and on repeat channels. Then came the spin-off sitcom The Green Green Grass, a fifth series of which is said to be in the pipeline. And now this: a prequel to Only Fools and Horses, a whole hour-and-a-half’s worth of back story explaining the birth of Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Had a dastardly dirty bomb gone off in the Wigmore Hall last night and turned us all to dust, the contemporary British classical music scene would, in one fell swoop, have been wiped off the map. No more Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, George Benjamin, Julian Anderson, Simon Bainbridge or Oliver Knussen, all of whom were gathered for the inaugural concert of the year-long residency at the hall of rising compositional star Luke Bedford (above) . This was a fascinating programme, delivered without fault by the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and Knussen. Most fascinating Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Another day, another plot to destabilise the planet. Early scenes in the eighth series of 24 show us a mellow, semi-retired agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) playing grandad to his daughter Kim's child, and planning to return with them from New York to LA to re-establish his family ties. With his career in the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) behind him, Jack is thinking of taking up an offer of some private security work.Then, as he's about to leave, a wounded informant hammers desperately on his door. He blurts out a tale of foreign assassins planning to shoot President Hassan of Kamistan ( Read more ...
Russ Coffey
The prefix “Christian” can invite mockery. The suffix “rock” usually makes it worse. And a Christian Rock band celebrating 25 years in yellow and black Spandex? Surely that has to be a spoof. But I have news for you: Eighties Californian glam metal band Stryper are real, back, and tonight they rocked.Stryper were formed in a world where the more macho a band the more they wore make-up, and where the intricacy of the guitar work was in direct proportion to the volume of hairspray. Stryper made no concessions to such conventions. Nor would they make any concessions to their religious beliefs. Read more ...
bruce.dessau
"So, we made it eventually." Having postponed this show two weeks ago due to the M1 doubling as a skating rink, Richard Hawley opened not with a song but an apology. It was hardly necessary. The sold-out Royal Festival Hall last night was prepared to forgive Sheffield's second-finest songsmith - after his chum Jarvis Cocker - almost anything.Making it eventually could also apply to Hawley's career. After two decades and little headway he finally hit paydirt with Coles Corner in 2005, bagging a Mercury Award nomination. If he trod a little water with 2007's self-conscious sequel Lady's Bridge Read more ...