Reviews
Sundance London 2013: Touchy FeelyWednesday, 24 April 2013
I’ve always thought of Lynn Shelton as Sundance royalty. Her breakthrough film Humpday – the über-buddy movie with the amateur porn twist – screened at the festival, as did her follow-up, Your Sister’s Sister, which demonstrated that Shelton could... Read more... |
Cooper, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, Royal Festival HallTuesday, 23 April 2013
Visiting orchestras and conductors often complain about agents’ insistence that they programme their main national dishes. The request is partly understandable: we all want to hear the Vienna Philharmonic in Mahler, the Czechs in Dvořák, the... Read more... |
Broadchurch, Series Finale, ITVTuesday, 23 April 2013
And the killer is... No, that would be telling, and you might not have watched it on catch-up yet. But was the revelation worth the wait?We often complain about the way British TV dramas are often squeezed into three or four (or two) parts, when an... Read more... |
Panorama - Secrets of Britain's Shari'a Courts, BBC OneTuesday, 23 April 2013
It feels a little as if BBC journalists are getting themselves into trouble every other week at the moment. As news emerges that new BBC chief Tony Hall will appear before MPs to discuss why they allowed a Panorama journalist to use a university... Read more... |
Sundance London 2013: Upstream ColorTuesday, 23 April 2013
Unburdened by conventional narrative sense, Upstream Color is a true curiosity. Seductively strange, woozily kinetic and above all romantic, Shane Carruth's second feature is a little film with big, bizarre ideas. Incorporating pig farming,... Read more... |
The Prisoners, BBC OneTuesday, 23 April 2013
“The best times I've ever had were in prison,” says Crystal, aged 23, one of the three inmates being followed in The Prisoners (this was originally planned as episode one, but was bounced from the schedules by the death of Baroness Thatcher). On the... Read more... |
Orpheus, Battersea Arts CentreTuesday, 23 April 2013
Orpheus, set in an imaginary Paris in the 1930s, delivers an unashamedly escapist and a quite delightful evening's entertainment. The Orpheus myth is often a pretext for fantasy or fun. Maybe the original, tragic tale is just too unremittingly dark... Read more... |
Juan Diego Flórez and friends, Barbican HallMonday, 22 April 2013
It takes a certain kind of artist to book American mezzo-extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato as a supporting act. It’s a risk. Even if you happen to be Juan Diego Flórez. But it’s one that actually paid off on the first night of Flórez’s three-concert... Read more... |
Buika and London Lucumi Choir, Union ChapelMonday, 22 April 2013
The choir sing off stage at first, under the wide arch to the side before filling the platform and singing the praises of Cuba’s Orisha spirits. Those Orisha guys must be shining like beads on a necklace. Lucumi were finalists in the 2008 BBC Choir... Read more... |
Jimeoin, Queen's Hall, EdinburghMonday, 22 April 2013
No theme, no message, no set, no title. Northern Irish comedian Jimeoin is a beguilingly old-fashioned kind of standup. “Just jokes,” he told us at the beginning of his new show, and he was true to his word. His gift lies in mining the quirks of... Read more... |
BernieMonday, 22 April 2013
"There are people in town that would have shot her for five dollars." Those are the shocking but undeniably comic words of a resident of Carthage, Texas, who's nonchalantly describing the strength of the vitriol felt toward murder victim Marjorie... Read more... |
Wiley, The ForumSunday, 21 April 2013
It was a full house in Kentish Town for a homecoming show for grime pioneers Wiley, Skepta and JME. A far cry from the Sidewinder and Eskimo Dance parties that spawned so many of the scene’s main players, instead this was a night that carried an air... Read more... |
