fri 25/07/2025

Reviews

Oh Boy

Niko (Tom Schilling) just wants a decent cup of coffee. With this ambling excuse for motivation, he drifts through a day and night in Berlin, contriving to lose his girlfriend, driver’s license and college funding (Dad’s just discovered he dropped...

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Sylvester Stallone, London Palladium

“There’s not much more I can do in action apart from explode,” says Sylvester Stallone with a grin on his face on being asked about the next step in his career. Following a video montage of the sweaty, musclebound action heroes Stallone is adored...

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Timeshift - How to Be Sherlock Holmes, BBC Four / Sherlock, BBC One

As Benedict Cumberbatch's Sherlock reached the end of its latest brief span, Timeshift [****] surveyed the history of dramatic interpretations of Baker Street's finest with a wry eye, in a narrative sprinkled with nutritious facts and anecdotes. The...

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CD: The Gloaming - The Gloaming

Musically, lyrically, dramatically, on every count this debut album from The Gloaming is exceptional. Four-fifths of the group - Clare fiddle player Martin Hayes, Chicago guitarist Dennis Cahill, the Cúil Aodha sean nós singer Iarla Ó Lionaird and...

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Kožená, Les Violons du Roy, Barbican Hall

Last night’s Mozart and Haydn concert at the Barbican was billed as Magdalena Kožená with Les Violons du Roy. In practice it actually turned out to be Les Violons du Roy with Magdalena Kožená, which (barring a few die-hard fans of the Czech mezzo)...

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The Voice, Series 3, BBC One

If you’re a channel trying to prove that there is life in a tired old format, it’s hard to think of a more effective way than signing up Kylie Minogue. It’s tough for a telly talent show to make an impact in those early weeks, before the audience...

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Hostages, Channel 4

Having brought us to the end of Homeland, Channel 4 are hoping lightning will strike twice by introducing another American series based on an Israeli original. Where Homeland was the American version of Hatufim, Hostages is derived from Bnei Aruba,...

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Reissue CDs Weekly: Jackson C. Frank

 Jackson C. Frank: Jackson C. Frank“I am afraid of the ocean as much as the possibility it is my mother,” declared Jackson C. Frank in the liner notes to his sole, eponymous album, issued in September 1965. “Songs that I write aren’t mine to...

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Gwilym Simcock, Kings Place

Gwilym Simcock, pianist, composer, and jazz-classical crossover specialist, is releasing two albums this year, and at Kings Place last night, the audience had a taste of both. An evening billed as the launch of Instrumation, Simcock’s new album of...

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Only Our Own, Arts Theatre

There are few things as depressing as whinge drama. But the Anglo-Irish have a reasonable claim to be considered the Republic of Ireland’s forgotten losers. The term means the wealthy Protestant class whose elegant stately homes dotted the landscape...

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Le Corsaire, English National Ballet

How silly is ballet allowed to be? It is a question that is not, well, as silly as it looks. English National Ballet’s director, Tamara Rojo, has set out her stall with a glitzy production of this 19th-century classic, her first full-length...

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Sherratt, Hallé, Znaider, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester

It’s all about the voice – Strauss’s Voice, which is the title of the series of concerts being given by the musical forces of Manchester to mark the 150th anniversary of his birth. It is becoming a happy custom these days for the Hallé, the BBC...

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