Reviews
Alison Moyet, Royal Festival HallWednesday, 16 October 2013
You couldn’t help marvelling at how good Alison Moyet looked. It wasn’t just her dramatically slimmed-down physique, but also the sense of her being truly comfortable in her own skin. Partly, that may have just been a result of an increasingly... Read more... |
BBC Singers, Endymion, Hill, Milton CourtWednesday, 16 October 2013
Milton Court’s new concert hall is a mighty small space, but the BBC Singers under their chief conductor David Hill were determined to launch their residency there with a musical epic of world events from Genesis to the post-nuclear era. And they... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Under the SkinWednesday, 16 October 2013
It's been nine years since Jonathan Glazer's last film, the courageous and underrated Birth. If that film had its moments of audacity then Under the Skin - an adaptation of Michel Faber's gloriously revolting novel - is a real feast of filmmaking... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Night MovesWednesday, 16 October 2013
Jesse Eisenberg’s second film of the LFF is Kelly Reichardt’s low-budget, simmering thriller, confirming his work-led choices since The Social Network. “This was the only blockbuster I was offered,” he deadpanned, asked at the first screening’s Q... Read more... |
Deep Purple, NIA, BirminghamWednesday, 16 October 2013
Read anything about rock music in the Seventies - about British hard rock music in particular - and three bands are pushed forward as titans: Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. However, while both Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin have gone... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Don JonWednesday, 16 October 2013
Playing against his wholesome appeal, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's debut outing as a writer/director spins a comedy of internet porn addiction, love, family, church – and a man who loves to do his own cleaning. Set in contemporary New Jersey, Gordon-... Read more... |
The Broken Circle BreakdownWednesday, 16 October 2013
The components of The Broken Circle Breakdown don’t seem as though they would make for a coherent whole. The film is Belgian with Flemish dialogue. Infatuated with bluegrass music and a mythical America, a leading character lives his life as a low-... Read more... |
Tonypandemonium, National Theatre WalesTuesday, 15 October 2013
Henry James said, “Realism is what in some shape or form we might encounter, whereas Romanticism is something we will never encounter.” The 19th-century Realists believed that “ordinary people” were “fit to be endowed” with the greatness of... Read more... |
Like Father, Like SonTuesday, 15 October 2013
From the simplest of precepts Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu spins a marvellously tender story of parents and children in Like Father, Like Son, as well as a subtle portrayal of the nuances of contemporary Japanese society. The emotions resound... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Inside Llewyn DavisTuesday, 15 October 2013
Showbiz is a cruel and mysterious cosmic code that can grind the artist down, before he comes close to cracking it. That’s the message behind the Coen brothers’ elegy to the Greenwich Village folk scene of 1961. Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) stands... Read more... |
Paul Klee: Making Visible, Tate ModernTuesday, 15 October 2013
"The objects in pictures look out at us serene or severe, tense or relaxed, comforting or forbidding, suffering or smiling." Thus said Paul Klee (1879-1940) in a lecture on modern art in 1924. It is an entirely accurate description of his own work,... Read more... |
Dogs: Their Secret Lives, Channel 4Tuesday, 15 October 2013
What the Dickens is happening to wildlife television? At the back end of all those Atttenborough films they have a segment in which they explain how they got the miracle money shot of the chorus line of orcas, the war ballet of the giraffes, the... Read more... |
