Reviews
55 Days, Hampstead TheatreThursday, 25 October 2012
In the past few years, without any fanfare, the veteran playwright and Spooks script-writer Howard Brenton has not only made a comeback, but also become the chief chronicler of the nation’s past. One year he is telling the story of Harold Macmillan... Read more... |
Brazil with Michael Palin, BBC OneThursday, 25 October 2012
We got to the beach around the 10-minute mark. Or “semi-naked suburbia”, as Michael Palin called it. And started patrolling the sands for rounded Brazilian rumps (female). Apparently only adolescent boys do this sort of thing, and television... Read more... |
Kafou: Haiti, Art and Vodou, Nottingham ContemporaryThursday, 25 October 2012
I’ve rarely come across an exhibition as loaded with context as this one. Voodoo – or Vodou, as the show has it – is a massively complex and contested phenomenon, from the pin-sticking and zombies of legend and fantasy to the no-less colourful... Read more... |
ElenaThursday, 25 October 2012
Elena is a story of two households, two families each unhappy in their own ways. Linking them is the title character (played by Nadezhda Markina, outstanding in a screen role that could have been written for her) who moves between two very different... Read more... |
Painting the Queen: A Portrait of Her Majesty, BBC FourWednesday, 24 October 2012
Has there ever been a successful portrait of the Queen? Not a photograph - there are been plenty of those (with its delicious air of ambivalence, Thomas Struth’s portrait of the Queen with Prince Philip stiffly occupying two ends of a sofa at... Read more... |
Elementary, Sky LivingWednesday, 24 October 2012
Last year at the National Theatre, Jonny Lee Miller appeared in Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch ("two excellent performances", according to theartsdesk's Sam Marlowe). Maybe something rubbed off, because now here's Miller following in... Read more... |
SisterWednesday, 24 October 2012
A tale of life at the foot of the slopes, French-Swiss director Ursula Meier’s follow-up to her likeably askew debut Home finds her once again zeroing in on an unusual domestic set-up. This time the focus is on a dysfunctional family, perilously... Read more... |
You've Been Trumped, BBC TwoTuesday, 23 October 2012
It has never been easier to get sucked into a warm, simplistic sensibility which portrays every rich capitalist businessman as corrupt and amoral, but you spend 90 minutes watching Donald Trump in action and you start to wonder. If Trump didn't... Read more... |
Skyfall reviewTuesday, 23 October 2012
It's Bond number 23, and if you were to suggest to me that it was the best of the lot, I might very well agree with you. This is a terrific James Bond movie, thoughtfully written, shrewdly cast and taking stock of everything that the 50-year-old... Read more... |
Panorama: Jimmy Savile - What The BBC Knew, BBC OneTuesday, 23 October 2012
From 10pm last night to around 11.40, the BBC did what no other broadcaster in the world would have the stomach for. It turned its guns with maximum lethalness on itself. The result was extraordinary television. “Crisis at the BBC,” chimed News at... Read more... |
Grizzly Bear, O2 Academy BrixtonTuesday, 23 October 2012
If Grizzly Bear’s name is unfamiliar to you, you’ll certainly know some of the indie-folk bands they’ve influenced. These include Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes, two of music’s more unlikely recent successes. Brooklyn’s Grizzly Bear never seemed to want... Read more... |
Girls, Sky AtlanticMonday, 22 October 2012
While it’s not unusual for an imported television show to have been downloaded, discussed and dissected at length long in advance of of its UK transmission date, HBO’s Girls is even harder than most to approach with an open mind. Depending on which... Read more... |
