Buzz
Jasper Rees
Ludovic Kennedy, whose death at the age of 89 was announced today, will be remembered for many achievements beyond his contribution to broadcasting. But for those who grew up when there were only three channels to choose from, he informed a generation’s idea of what a broadcaster ought to be.Whether such a patrician figure would have had the same career nowadays is open to doubt. He would have been deemed rather too plummy to read the news on ITV, or present Panorama, both of which he did with distinction. And if Did You See..? still existed, it’s hard to imagine Kennedy finding anything to Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
One of London’s lesser-known but nevertheless one of its most enjoyable and inspiring arts festivals is taking place this weekend – Colombiage, a celebration of all things Colombian. Curated by Landa Acevedo-Scott and now in its third edition, the Festival brings writers, film-makers, talks and hot, hot music at a weekend event at the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith. There are something like 60,000 Colombians in London and the audience seemed 50 per cent Colombians and 50 per cent others. Yesterday Ramon Chao discussed his extraordinary book The Train Of Fire And Ice about his Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Outwardly the Morgan Library & Museum is a citadel of sedateness - inside it may be the locus of turbulence. Thirteen years ago I walked around one of the rooms with the actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, on whom I was writing a profile. She was then starring in Franco Zeffirelli’s Jane Eyre, and it made sense for us to look at the Morgan’s exhibition of Brontë juvenilia together. She seemed vaguely haunted by the show; I know I was. It was the sight of the tiny writing, the tiny gloves (Charlotte’s), and the locks of thin blondish Brontë hair - close enough to touch - under the glass cabinets Read more ...
theartsdesk
www.ballet.co.uk - ballet fans' website run by Bruce Marriott
http://www.charliegillett.com/ Great site by veteran DJ with lively Forum. Mainly world music.
http://www.therestisnoise.com/ Personal site of the New Yorker music critic Alex Ross.
Ismene Brown
Fleeting snippets of Vaslav Nijinsky apparently dancing on primitive film do, astonishingly, seem to capture his legendary liquidity of movement and capacity for making stillness arresting. But are they real?Here he is in 1910, dancing the Golden Slave in Sheherazade: Several sequences from his L'après-midi d'un faune, 1912, top and below: What is the chatter heard on the first film? Is it the voices of Diaghilev and his colleagues while the sequence is being filmed?In fact, the films are computer-generated by a digital artist using remarkably convincing techniques not very different Read more ...
josh.spero
If there is one thing which I should impress upon you about the Frieze Art Fair, it is do not believe what anyone else says (a good principle for reviewing generally): go and see it yourself this weekend. It is a great day out: Regent’s Park is beautiful, you can see a tremendous amount of good and not-so-good contemporary art, you can buy an expensive coffee and contemplate your fellow fair-goers. Frieze is the artistic cultural phenomenon of our time and it is worth seeing what the fuss (and there is fuss) is about.This entire past week in London feels like it has been revolving around the Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Russians are prone to ask the big questions, and among them, resonating periodically and patriotically, from film studio corridors to the Kremlin itself, is, "What is the state of our national film industry?" A partial answer is provided by a fleet of films in three forthcoming British festivals. And the forecast? Much darkness visible. But a rare chance to see five classic Soviet musicals from the 1930s to the 1940s on the big screen in Britain does something to brighten the picture.Film professionals here in Moscow seem an unusually cliquey lot (unless it just goes with the territory). Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The term "Awards Ceremony" can strike terror into the stoutest of hearts, but hats off to the masterminds of the 2009 Classic FM Gramophone awards. Their shindig at the Dorchester was enjoyable, educational, and even intermittently hilarious (and for the right reasons).Mathieu Herzog, viola player with France's Quatuor Ebène who carried off the lusted-after Recording Of The Year award for their disc of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré, even ran Antoine "Eurotrash" de Caunes close as the Frenchman the Brits love to love. Having tried, and failed, to phone his French amis back home to share the moment Read more ...
Ismene Brown
"theartsdesk.com is a really exciting new development for all arts consumers, journalists, promoters, movers and shakers""The Arts Desk is a bloody good read, and tasting nice and reliable""The line-up of writers is already so distinguished""A daily must-visit, I’d have thought""It is exciting to see theartsdesk.com using advancing technologies to cover the arts in new and innovative ways""Brilliant content, very impressive list of contributors and a much needed counterpart to the shrinking of arts coverage in the printed media""Pages like this are the future of arts journalism. BIG-UP Read more ...
william.ward
“Guarda, è come se fosse morta la regina Elisabetta, sai?” I didn’t really need the comparison with the hypothetical demise of our own beloved monarch to be spelled out for me by my partner, a somewhat reserved professor of Paediatric Neurology at one of Rome’s leading hospitals, in order to drive home the deep shock engendered by the sudden death of Italy’s best-loved veteran TV compère on the collective psyche of a nation.True to his quietly heroic and endlessly energetic persona, Mike Bongiorno did not die what our Anglo-Saxon warrior forebears used to call a “cow’s death” – ie in bed, or Read more ...
sheila.johnston
Last night I was drinking cappuccino with Britain's answer to Robert Redford in a Soho coffee bar. Elliot Grove and I go back a long way: we first met in 1993 when Grove launched Raindance, London's version of Sundance, the premier American independent film festival founded by Redford. Since then Sundance has increasingly been attacked for selling out to Hollywood. By contrast Raindance, now in its 17th year, is still going strong and retains an air of authentic independence.The festival opens on September 30 with the mumblecore comedy Humpday and closes with Steven Soderbergh's The Read more ...
ash.smyth
It is a stinking hot afternoon. In an unventilated shed seemingly purpose-built for breeding mosquitoes, I am walking round and round a stone spiral. A benign-looking woman has assured me it is the way to peace. Despite my scepticism, I follow her instructions, pausing every few feet to read the peace-themed quotations carved on each of the rocks. Some are moving, some purely poetic. Most tread Oprahishly along that that very fine line between simple brilliance and childish naïvety.As an artwork, it is uncomplicated stuff, but it gives one pause – not least because several of the inscriptions Read more ...