Reviews
Nick Hasted
How do you corral 250 films in a way which makes sense to potential viewers? Major releases – so far at this year’s LFF we've had Suffragette, Johnny Depp in Black Mass and Maggie Smith in The Lady in the Van – pretty much take care of themselves. For the mostly unknown rest, festival director Clare Stewart introduced themed strands in 2012 with the stated aim of making the festival “much easier to navigate”. Where the LFF had previously been divided by nation – New British Cinema, French Revolutions, then Europe, then everyone else – we now essentially have a choice of emotions: Dare, Thrill Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Stunningly reinvented in series four, Homeland sustained the momentum with this tense and menacing fifth season opener. Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) has now quit the CIA for a new job in Berlin, where she's working as head of security for billionaire philanthropist Otto Düring (Sebastian Koch). The past, however, is not giving up without a fight.In the light of recent real-life events, it was smart work by the writers to throw the spotlight on the German capital. Filming obviously took place before the current refugee crisis (and Frau Merkel's controversial leading role in it) blew up, but Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Return to Larkinland was the second of AN Wilson’s intimate portraits of poets, following his similar excursion to “Betjemanland” last year. His very particular form of exploration of the biographical genre results in a selectively detailed portrait seen through the eyes of an admitted admirer, a sense of character created through a pronounced feel for Larkin’s times, caught in redolent black and white archive, as well as in the attention he pays to the places and spaces of the poet’s life.Wilson knew Larkin well, but wasn’t reluctant to confront the darker issues that have been associated Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It may seem strange to begin a review of a comedy gig with a description of the Tube journey home. But it was noticeable that the crowds who left the O2 Arena in London after Michael McIntyre's new show Happy & Glorious weren't talking about it. About the weather, the full train, what they were up to at the weekend, yes; but his show, no.That is not to say it was poor, or that there wasn't a lot of laughter in the room. Far from it. McIntyre is an experienced enough pro that he can construct a decent evening's entertainment, and he did here. But consistently rolling-in-the-aisles funny? Read more ...
Sarah Kent
The first thing you encounter is a ballot box bolted to the lid of a school desk; what or whom you might be voting for – apart from the hope of change – is not specified. In the eyes of Jimmie Durham, change is badly needed; in fact, most of the premises on which western society is built could do with a radical rethink. Judging by the state of the box, though – the lid looks as if it has been prized open and bolted down many times – fair and free elections seem unlikely. Mostly probably, the outcome would be rigged.Nearby is a revolving door that returns you (rather like a rigged election) to Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
Stravinsky and Bartók both escaped Europe at the start of the second world war to live in the USA. For Stravinsky it was the start of 30 years of mostly happy exile, while Bartók was to survive for only five years. Works from their time in America featured in Valery Gergiev’s penultimate concert as principal conductor of the LSO last night.Stravinsky’s neoclassical Symphony in C is not often heard in concert – it was the first time I had heard it live – and this performance was not a great advertisement for the piece. Written half in Europe, at a time when the composer’s wife, mother and Read more ...
Matthew Wright
The tragic love of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath is probably Britain’s most notorious 20th-century relationship. While other controversies – for example, those of Wallace Simpson, John Profumo and Princess Diana – have been laid to rest, Hughes and Plath are still generating headlines more than 50 years after Plath’s suicide in 1963. There is, of course, more rivetingly combustible matter in Hughes and Plath’s lives than those other ill-fated lovers – which this timely and engrossing documentary captured with briskly riveting style. Most recently, those headlines have emanated from the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Georgie Fame: The Whole World’s Shaking – The Complete Recordings 1963–1966Last month, theartsdesk’s Reissue CDs Weekly tackled a collection of albums by Faces which, despite great remastered sound and noteworthy bonus tracks, was a thoughtless, cheapo package ill-befitting a band of such popularity and status. This splendid new Georgie Fame box set is exactly the sort of thing the Faces release could and should have been.The meat of The Whole World’s Shaking – The Complete Recordings 1963–1966 is Fame’s four albums from the period: Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo, Fame at Last, Sweet Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
A finely honed and spacious selection dating from the 1950s to now, looks in acute focus at the work – a scatter of drawings, a print, but almost entirely paintings – of Frank Auerbach, (b 1931). An only child, he came without his family, from Berlin to England in 1939. His parents were murdered in the Holocaust. He is now one of the most remarkable painters of our time.Work chosen by the artist himself is arranged in six galleries each spanning a decade: each image is a commanding presence, and the paintings range in size, scale and subject matter from the substantial to domestic intimacy. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
If there was any doubt as to the musical preferences of BBC4's commissioning arm, consider this: the whole history of funk got an hour. Meanwhile, indie music – a niche, artistic movement that somehow ended up drinking champagne while wallowing in its own mess by the mid-Nineties – gets a three-part series. Just thought I’d mention it.With time on its side, as we began part two, Music for Misfits was up to the Eighties. Following last week’s implication that punk was some kind of year zero for privately pressed records (it wasn’t), this episode started with the claim that, in the Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
This Barbican concert began with a Mendelssohn overture and ended with a Haydn symphony. But on stage were the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Ilan Volkov. What did you expect in between, a Mozart piano concerto? Not likely. Instead they gave the first performance of No.48 (night studio) by Richard Ayres. English-born but resident in the Netherlands and working mostly on the Continent, Ayres has impeccable post-Minimalist credentials (studies with Louis Andriessen and Morton Feldman) which do no more than hint at how his music behaves – like a kid in a well-stocked acoustic sweet-shop. Or at a Read more ...
graham.rickson
Erkki-Sven Tüür, Brett Dean: Gesualdo Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir/Tõnu Kaljuste (ECM) Hearing composers engaging with the music of the past is invariably fascinating. Stravinsky's Pulcinella prompted me years ago to investigate Pergolesi (though many of the pieces adapted for that ballet weren't actually by him), and this stunner of a disc invoked shock, wonder and delight, sending me onto Spotify in search of choral music by the quirky Renaissance composer Carlo Gesualdo. His harmonically adventurous vocal ouput still casts a spell, though he's Read more ...