Reviews
Classical CDs Weekly: Batzner, Floyd, MahlerSaturday, 15 October 2016
Jay C. Batzner: as if to each other… R. Andrew Lee (piano) (Irritable Hedgehog)Like the Charlemagne Palestine disc reviewed a few weeks ago, this release won’t be to all tastes. But give as if to each other… sufficient time and it will get under... Read more... |
A Man of Good Hope, Young VicFriday, 14 October 2016
The first thing you hear are the marimbas – music that’s pounded, punched out of the air by hundreds of fists. Later the instruments give us dances and songs, but this musical violence is never truly absent from an orchestra made up entirely of... Read more... |
LFF 2016: Their Finest / BrimstoneFriday, 14 October 2016
Among the myriad global offerings at the LFF, the resoundingly British Their Finest ★★★★★ , about a group of film-makers working for the Ministry of Information in London in 1940, is surely among the most sheerly enjoyable. Okay, it was directed by... Read more... |
InfernoFriday, 14 October 2016
Dan Brown is famed for calamitous language massacres that sell by the kerchillion to tone-deaf Renaissance cryptogram junkies. His sentences hurt eyes and his plots numb skulls. But one thing you can say for Brown is he checks facts like an... Read more... |
The Vulgar, Barbican Art GalleryFriday, 14 October 2016
In this autumn’s Vagabonds Collection, Viktor and Rolf showed a pink top covered in hundreds of buttons and framed with elaborate furls of pale pink and blue tulle; did they intend the model to look as if she was wearing a giant vulva across her... Read more... |
Al Murray, Royal Albert HallFriday, 14 October 2016
You may have thought that the Brexit vote in June would have been manna from heaven for Al Murray as the Pub Landlord, his knucklehead xenophobe creation. But in this uneven and – at two-and-a-half hours – overlong show, the referendum result and... Read more... |
The Missing, Series 2, BBC OneThursday, 13 October 2016
It seems morbid, and perhaps even in dubious taste, to create a TV drama franchise focusing on the hideous fate of abducted children and the repercussions this has on their family and friends. Still, ratings are their own reward, and the first... Read more... |
Shopping and F***ing, Lyric HammersmithThursday, 13 October 2016
Playwright Mark Ravenhill’s 1996 Royal Court debut was not the decade’s most shocking piece of theatre, but its title was, and still is, certainly the most annoying for producers and publicists. Under a Victorian law – the Indecent Advertisements... Read more... |
American HoneyThursday, 13 October 2016
“It’s a business opportunity,” explains Jake (Shia LaBoeuf) to dreadlocked, wild-child Star (Sasha Lane). She’s eyeing him up in the aisles of a Midwestern Walmart while he dances around with a rag-tag, stoned young crew to Rihanna’s “We Found Love... Read more... |
Icebreaker and BJ Cole, Milton CourtThursday, 13 October 2016
Call it re-analogification, de-digitisation or perhaps just plain reverse-engineering, Icebreaker’s set at Milton Court was all about reclaiming the electronic for hoary-handed instrumentalists. Their skills are well-honed: from Anna Meredith to... Read more... |
LFF 2016: Snowden / The Birth of a Nation / ArrivalThursday, 13 October 2016
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on thrillers like The Parallax View, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American political conspiracies, and inevitably he portrays CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and... Read more... |
Crude, Shed 36, Port of DundeeThursday, 13 October 2016
It’s not often you need a passport to get into a theatre show. But then the journey required to get to Scottish site-specific experts Grid Iron’s Crude does feel like something of a pilgrimage – first get yourself to Dundee, then find the Science... Read more... |
