Reviews
Edinburgh 2013: Tig Notaro/Joe LycettSaturday, 24 August 2013
Tig Notaro, Gilded Balloon ****“I've been busy. I've been growing my hair out.” Not the the most animated start to an hour of comedy, but that's how American Tig Notaro begins Boyish-Girl Interrupted, one of the most original 60 minutes I've seen at... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Rachmaninov, Terje Rypdal, Valentina Montoya MartínezSaturday, 24 August 2013
Rachmaninov: The Bells, Symphonic Dances Rundfunkchor Berlin, Berliner Philharmoniker/Sir Simon Rattle (Warner Classics)The red spine on the jewel case and the typeface look familiar enough, though the top right hand corner of the CD cover... Read more... |
Prom 54: World RoutesFriday, 23 August 2013
Why are the Malians always punching way above their weight in music? There may be some historical reasons. The French always were more welcoming to the culture of their empire than the Brits (and more used to foreign-language music), while Paris... Read more... |
Prom 53: Antonacci, Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Nézet-SéguinFriday, 23 August 2013
Prokofiev’s Fifth is a symphony for which the conductor’s setting tends to be turned to either bright and light or dark and heavy. Perhaps because of the composer’s perceived joker role as set against Shostakovich the symphonic chronicler of Soviet... Read more... |
Chimerica, Harold Pinter TheatreFriday, 23 August 2013
It’s as dazzling as a neon-lit cityscape and nearly as sprawling: Lucy Kirkwood’s epic new drama is rich, riveting and theatrically audacious. A co-production with Headlong, the tirelessly inventive touring company founded by Rupert Goold, it feels... Read more... |
What Maisie KnewFriday, 23 August 2013
The notion of childhood as any sort of state of grace gets exploded big-time in What Maisie Knew, a largely blistering celluloid updating of the 1897 Henry James novel from The Deep End team of co-directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel. True (for... Read more... |
Saints Row IVFriday, 23 August 2013
The Saints Row series has always been something of a magpie, stealing liberally from other games. It started out as a cheap second-tier Grand Theft Auto clone. But here, it transforms into a very silly, but great fun knockabout superhero game - the... Read more... |
We're the MillersFriday, 23 August 2013
We're the Millers is a road movie which sees a group of outsiders learn how to fill traditional roles and find happiness. It's a film that flirts with rebellion but ultimately reveals itself to be boringly conformist. Director Rawson Marshall... Read more... |
Prom 52: Batiashvili, BBC Symphony Orchestra, OramoThursday, 22 August 2013
Concert programmes are designed to make the mind flexible with constant contrasts. More often, though, the great is the enemy of the good-ish. Last night an Elgar masterpiece was always going to overshadow its second-half predecessor, a hazily... Read more... |
ElysiumThursday, 22 August 2013
Neil Blomkamp’s got a thing for crafts. Spacecrafts, that is. With his first feature, District 9, alien ships hovered over Johannesburg in 1982. Now it’s 2154 and Elysium, a nirvana-like space station for the elite, floats in Earth’s orbit, using... Read more... |
The Man Who Collected the World: William Burrell, BBC FourThursday, 22 August 2013
Had the wealthy William Burrell had a son, Glasgow might not have acquired the world-class art collection that the shipping entrepreneur amassed during his long life. But with the birth of a sole daughter came both ambitions and suspicion – he... Read more... |
Top Boy, Series 2, Channel 4Wednesday, 21 August 2013
After the almost complete absence of the police from the first series of Top Boy, the sirens are blazing as the follow-on to Ronan Bennett’s tough drug-dealing drama kicks in. Specifically, they’re exhuming the corpse of Kamale, who fell victim to... Read more... |
