Reviews
Adam Sweeting
ITV1 really, really loves that succulent two-hour slot in the middle of Sunday evening, and anything that goes in there has the legacy of Morse, Lewis, Frost, Miss Marple et al to live up to. The latest cunning plan for Detective Sunday is to recruit the rather excellent Brenda Blethyn to play DCI Vera Stanhope in adaptations of Ann Cleeves's novels, set in the author's native North-East.In fact, with the lineage of TV detectives now long enough to stretch to the moon and back several times, choice of location is becoming critical as a means of telling them apart. Vera is well served by its Read more ...
Russ Coffey
Two cult singers on the same bill. A stirring prospect in itself, but last night they were both also at watersheds in their careers. The headliner, Ron Sexsmith, was looking to cultivate a more mainstream audience. He’s had his moments over the years, such as when he was covered by Chris Martin, Rod Stewart and Curtis Stigers. But last night he seemed to want the fans to have another look at him. On one song he styled himself as a “late bloomer”, but he didn’t need to convince this crowd.Even though producer Bob Rock has done a good job putting some AOR sheen on the new record, the songs are Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The flying Twitter fragments said more about The Wedding than the battalions of experts, "palace insiders", historians and friends ever could (couldn't somebody have put a bag over Simon "infinite loop" Schama's head and had him bundled away from the BBC studio in the boot of a car?) Everybody seemed to adore Kate's dress. Some suggested that princesses Eugenie and Beatrice were in drag. "The Royal Family is BACK", tweeted Piers Morgan. "#proudtobeenglish" added former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan. "Harry's thinking, how did I not end up in a carriage with Pippa Middleton?" Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Popping up on royal wedding day from the Niebelheim where they spend most of their working life, the WNO Orchestra brought with them a birth-and-death programme: hatch and dispatch, rather than match. Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll was a thank-you present to Cosima for their baby son, born out of wedlock; Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony turned into an epitaph for Wagner when he died in 1883, though most of it was written while he was still alive but ailing.Might they have planned it differently had they known? Wedding marches and arrivals of queens of Sheba would have drawn the Valleys coach parties; Read more ...
graham.rickson
It’s string-quartet Saturday – a young German group tackle Soviet classics and a rejuvenated Russian quartet smile with Haydn. There’s music from a contemporary Polish master and exquisitely uncomfortable fin-de-siècle music from Vienna.Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets Mandelring Quartet (Audite)
These are wonderful performances. The Mandelring Quartet don’t overplay the savagery and shocks - their approach is lyrical, sane and effortlessly musical. They can deploy the big guns when necessary – the second movement of the 10th quartet is a good example – but they always care about Read more ...
howard.male
“There’s no place like home… there’s no place like home… there’s no place like home…” A wish became a mantra and then became a happy ending, when Dorothy wiggled her ruby-red shoes in the MGM movie version of L Frank Baum’s fairy story. But this documentary didn’t even get to the most watched film in the history of cinema until its closing 10 minutes: perhaps because its makers were concerned that if they’d called it “The Story of L Frank Baum” it wouldn’t have found an audience.And that would have been a pity because Baum’s story, as told by his great grandson, great granddaughter and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The protagonist in a coming-of-age movie is usually an adolescent, but in Cedar Rapids it's a fully-grown adult. The hapless ingénu in question is goofy and naive Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), dedicated 34-year-old salesman for the Brown Star Insurance company of Brown Valley, Wisconsin. In Lippe (pronounced Lippy) world, insurance isn't another name for dirty sales tricks and finding ingenious ways to weasel out of paying claims, but more like a kind of social service. Indeed, Brown Star's boss, Bill Krogstad (Stephen Root), prides himself on the firm's Christian values.When the action moves to the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
As genres go, it’s a broad church: the tale of the alien who visits our world (our world obviously being contemporary America) encompasses everything from The Man Who Fell to Earth to Galaxy Quest. The story tends to riff on the same tension: how our planet shapes up in the eyes of intergalactic visitors. It can be done for laughs, for thrills, even for tears (see, if you are indeed an alien and haven't already, ET). Thor, in which the titular Norse god is exiled to small-town New Mexico, makes a play for all three.Does it work? Are you kidding? Like, does Thor swing a mean hammer? Well Read more ...
David Nice
With regional youth orchestras dropping from a thousand short-sighted, wholesale cuts - flagship Leicestershire the latest under threat - it should be enough just to celebrate 60 seasons of the LSSO, safe for now under the City of London's munificent wing. But last night was more than just another fun concert. No one ought to miss any appearance of the, ahem, enormously charismatic Leif Segerstam, composer of 244 symphonies to date and master orchestral trainer, who always goes for depth of sound rather than surface glitter. Nor is it every year you get to hear the Britten Cello Symphony, one Read more ...
judith.flanders
In this month of royal weddings, endless bank holidays and (possibly?) equally endless good weather, it can be hard to focus, so perhaps this is the perfect opportunity to catch up with a show that nearly got away. Instead of winsome blockbusters like Tate Modern’s Miró, or the V&A’s The Cult of Beauty, Ivor Abrahams' print show is tart as well as sweet, small but perfectly formed, the ideal restorative after too much sugar, whether in wedding cakes or art galleries.Ivor Abrahams is perhaps better known as a sculptor, studying under Anthony Caro in the 1950s, and first exhibiting, Read more ...
josh.spero
There is little rational explanation for why Giles Coren and Sue Perkins are still on the television, other than that the trained ferrets have still not yet been found. They brought their inimitable, emetic style to royal weddings with last night's Giles and Sue's Royal Wedding on BBC Two. Were one forgiving (very forgiving), you could call their shtick - making every obvious joke going, hamming up their historical situations - ironic.Their series - Giles and Sue camp their way through historical meals - is perfect for wet Tuesday afternoons when the GCSE history students need some time off Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
N-Dubz's music is throwaway post-grime cheese-pop aimed at fans aged between 10 and 20, max. I've been writing a rearguard action for electronic pop in the pompously self-assured court of rock for more than a decade so I arrived at the Brighton Centre ready to sponge it up.Almost everyone present was a teenager or in loco parentis. Despite an expected sell-out the place was two-thirds to three-quarters full. This may be because N-Dubz peaked about two years ago, or it may be that Boho old Brighton is just not N-Dubz's core territory. Either way, much of their target audience has, perhaps, Read more ...