Los Angeles
Matt Wolf
Is friendship mightier and more durable than sex? That's the proposition put forward by the engaging if ultimately cautious Banana Split, the Los Angeles-set romcom in which two teenagers become friends unbeknownst to the long-haired himbo boyfriend whom they have shared. Co-written by Hannah Marks, who stars as the wounded (but maybe not) April, this feature film directing debut from cinematographer Benjamin Kasulke is sufficiently lively that one feels the timidity of its closing sequence that much more fully.Up until then, there's a lot that both surprises and satisfies about a movie that Read more ...
joe.muggs
A singer-songwriter of somewhat mystical bent, originally from a forested island in the US Pacific Northwest, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith really came into her own when she discovered vintage synthesizers. In particular, her masterpiece, 2016's EARS, saw her vocals merging into the rich flows of bubbling tones, melodies channelling folk traditions from various corners of the world, creating an unmistakably utopian sound. It felt neither futurist nor retro – rather, of a part with Craig Leon's Interplanetary Folk Music or Ursula K. Le Guin & Todd Barton Music and Poetry of the Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Fiona Apple simmered in the LA sun for eight years to make this record, mostly holed up at home since her beloved dog died and she stopped drinking. Rather than polish the result to a sleek gleam, this is an album of trailing threads and percussive clatter, layered like unwiped tape. The brightly shining teenage angst queen of the Nineties continues to rub herself raw, rejecting major label norms, and left alone as Neil Young and Kate Bush are. The title is Gillian Anderson’s sex-crime cop’s demand in The Fall, when a room where a girl has been tortured needs breaking open. Cutters fetched, Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Alongside the man he calls “the other half of my brain”, Flying Lotus, Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner sits near the heart of Los Angeles’ fertile, genre-busting scene, helping to link Kendrick Lamar’s righteous rebel rap, Kamasi Washington’s spiritual jazz, and the faux-nerd white one-man bands of Louis Cole and Sam Gendel. Breaking through himself with Drunk (2017), It Is What It Is confirms Thundercat’s own complex character, being both slyly funny and obscurely moving, as if attending a party that’s almost over.“Black Qualls” features another in the current generation of prodigious, Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Let’s talk about “Blinding Lights”. What a sleek single, like an escapee from the acclaimed soundtrack to the film Drive, a polished riff on mid-Eighties synth-pop, ripe for 21st century dancefloors, one of the songs of the year so far, all topped off with the crystal falsetto of Abel Tesfaye, AKA The Weeknd. Is his new album, then, full of other treats that similarly step sideways from his trademark electro-warped hip Los Angeleno R&B, or is it business as (un)usual? The answer is that it’s a bit of both.The Canadian star has worked with everyone from Kanye West to Ed Sheeran to Kendrick Read more ...
Matt Wolf
It’s not so much that Pretty Woman: The Musical isn’t much good, which it isn’t. More to the point is that this West End replica of the recent Broadway musical of the 1990 film feels utterly superfluous: a gloss on a popular romcom that doesn’t improve upon or deepen our appreciation of the original in any way. Indeed, at the press preview attended, one could feel the audience all but marking time until the iconic Roy Orbison song of the title gets trotted out in order to bring an expectant crowd to their feet. Nothing else in the preceding two and a half hours comes close to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
The 92nd Academy Awards saved its surprises for a final stretch that saw Parasite make history as the first foreign language film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, pipping to the post the presumptive favourite, the World War One drama 1917 (pictured below). The top prize marked the fourth Oscar of the night for the South Korean success story, following a no less startling director trophy for Bong Joon Ho over 1917’s heavily favoured Sam Mendes, as well as prizes for best original screenplay and best international film.“I will drink until next morning,” Bong remarked to an adoring crowd Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The L Word originally ran for six seasons between 2004 and 2009, and its then-revolutionary depiction of the lives of a group of lesbians in Los Angeles won it both a fanatical audience and acclaim for its game-changing content, exploring such topics as same-sex marriage, gay adoption and female sexuality which weren't being seen elsewhere on TV. But more than a decade later, how will this revamped version (on Sky Atlantic) fare?Whereas the prototype landed in a TV environment where viewers needed extra-sensory perception to detect a lesbian (let alone trans) character, that now feels like Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Waking at a pivotal moment in Black Angel, alcoholic songwriter-pianist Marty Blair (Dan Duryea) momentarily mistakes his new professional partner Catherine Bennett (June Vincent) for his estranged wife Mavis Marlowe (Constance Dowling). Each is a radiant blonde singer, but to Marty they are polar opposites: Catherine the madonna, Mavis the whore.The shot that almost merges them indicates that Marty – his Oedipus Complex unresolved – turns every woman he loves into a femme fatale. This isn’t cod Hollywood psychologising but precise Freudianism, and it's deeply disturbing. Mavis is Read more ...
Russ Coffey
In a season awash with limp carols, dodgy glam-rock and schmaltzy jazz, all credit to Los Lobos for coming up with something different. LLegó Navidad (Christmas is Here) contains 12 festive folk songs, mostly hailing from Latin America. There's not a sprig of tinsel or ho ho ho in sight. Instead, we get a series of simple, homespun textures warmed by the Southern Californian sun. It's all a lot softer than the Los Lobos of "La Bamba" (1987). This is much more like their acoustic Mexican album La Pistola y La Corazon. The East LA quintet researched over 150 lesser- Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Natasha Khan is ending this intimate UK tour where her dreams first took shape. Study at the University of Brighton began 12 years in the bohemian town, and her twice Mercury-nominated, mythology-minded pop life. She could sometimes be found here in St Bartholomew’s, a vaulting Victorian temple with the supposed dimensions of Noah’s ark, all sunken shadows and glinting gilt, tucked just off London Road’s grubby shopping bustle. It was “a church I used to sit in and have a quiet moment”, Khan tells us. With only a second keyboardist sharing the stage, tonight is a very personal homecoming.Khan Read more ...
David Nice
The megastars are here at the Barbican, for an intensive three days in the case of the LA Phil and Gustavo Dudamel, throughout the season as the hall shines an "Artist Spotlight" on pianist Yuja Wang. Despite a shallow opener showcasing the individual talents of the Los Angeles principals and daft, rollicking Sousa at the end, there was a seriousness of intent and depth of focus that belied the touring glitz. The biggest miracle, perhaps, came in a three-minute encore from Wang - her third - but you couldn't fail to be deeply impressed by the execution of the rest.Just when you think you're Read more ...