America
Reissue CDs Weekly: R.E.M., Alice Cooper, The Durutti Column, Aztec CameraSunday, 23 September 2012![]() R.E.M.: Document 25th Anniversary EditionKieron TylerAlthough the band themselves have not lasted out the 25 years since the release of their fifth album Document, R.E.M. haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. The memory will live, fed by... Read more... |
Killing Them SoftlyFriday, 21 September 2012![]() Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction saw Harvey Keitel play Winston "The Wolf" Wolfe, a snappily attired, coolly menacing clean-up guy, brought in to mop up blood and brains and save Jules and Vincent’s bacon. In Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly... Read more... |
DVD: A Woman Under the InfluenceFriday, 14 September 2012![]() Described by Peter Falk as, “a love story between a woman who’s half wacky and a guy who’s inarticulate”, John Cassavetes’ seventh feature from 1974 is without doubt one of his finest achievements. It’s one of several collaborations between... Read more... |
The Killers, RoundhouseWednesday, 12 September 2012![]() The moment everyone will remember came exactly an hour in: Brandon Flowers was singing “All These Things That I've Done” with the conviction of a man at confession. Behind him a video screen showed a loner carrying a long wooden sign on his... Read more... |
Choir Boy, Royal Court TheatreTuesday, 11 September 2012![]() With the American presidential election campaign now in full swing, the search is surely on for cultural expressions of the two nations that the candidates represent: white rich people versus the rest. Okay, maybe an exaggeration, but who says I’m... Read more... |
CD: Bob Dylan - TempestSunday, 09 September 2012![]() Like Orpheus, Bob Dylan is familiar with the underworld. As he gets closer to meeting his maker, the tone of his work has become less baroque, increasingly stripped down and almost naïve in its simplicity. His latest album marks another episode,... Read more... |
Lady Gaga: Back to the FutureFriday, 07 September 2012![]() Lady Gaga arrives in the UK this weekend to play two huge shows at Twickenham Stadium, before moving on to Manchester. Today, she is the biggest pop star in the world. Three years ago she was in the final stages of a highly orchestrated campaign... Read more... |
Dallas, Channel 5Thursday, 06 September 2012![]() Praise be, they’ve kept the title sequence. Dallas, the mama of all American soap operas, is famous for a lot of things – Stetsons, satin sheets, surreal shower scenes, the slow disintegration of Priscilla Presley’s nose – but perhaps the most... Read more... |
Without You, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 06 September 2012![]() Who says you can't go home again? American actor-singer Anthony Rapp does that, and then some, with his solo show Without You, in which one of the original leads of the Broadway musical Rent relives the passions and pain of an extraordinary... Read more... |
LawlessMonday, 03 September 2012![]() Australian director John Hillcoat certainly knows what he likes, and what he likes is lawlessness. It’s the central focus of his brilliantly uncompromising film Ghosts… of the Civil Dead, which saw a high-security prison driven to bloody ruin, and... Read more... |
CD: Animal Collective - Centipede HzFriday, 31 August 2012![]() Nine albums and almost 10 years in, Animal Collective show no signs of smoothing the edges from their herky-jerk, ADHD psyche-pop. Vocals carry a melody, but everything else in the mix counters that – pinging sounds, Afro-inspired percussion, bloops... Read more... |
John Barrowman's Dallas, Channel 5Thursday, 30 August 2012![]() John Barrowman's Dallas was a shameless ad for Channel 5's upcoming new series, an updated retread of the American soap opera, but an enjoyable pointer nonetheless to what pleasures await us - the amuse-bouche, if you will, to the meaty main course... Read more... |
