America
CD: Ry Cooder - Election SpecialMonday, 13 August 2012
Ry Cooder is an unpredictable quantity. He’s a prickly, opinionated old coot who doesn’t seem the type to pass a night in the pub with. He’d probably not get your jokes and moan about the Rolling Stones nicking his songs. His musical output is... Read more... |
The Newsroom, Sky AtlanticWednesday, 08 August 2012
American critics haven't been too kind to Aaron Sorkin's new HBO series about a cable TV news programme, for a variety of reasons. At least they had the advantage of understanding the intricate partisan infighting of American politics which forms... Read more... |
DVD: This Must Be the PlaceTuesday, 07 August 2012
Those familiar with Italian director Paolo Sorrentino’s elegant political feature Il Divo (2008), or perhaps the beautiful, cynical The Consequences of Love (2004) may find themselves struck (pleasantly) dumb by the direction of his latest. Inspired... Read more... |
The Hitchcock Players: Kim Novak, VertigoSaturday, 04 August 2012
In Vertigo Kim Novak plays two women who are really just one. First Madeleine, a supernatural siren, a woman apparently possessed by her tragedienne great-grandmother Carlotta Valdes. However, it’s a performance within a performance and she’s merely... Read more... |
Eames: The Architect and the PainterThursday, 02 August 2012
A friend of mine has an Eames lounge chair that he treats with enormous reverence and claims is the comfiest seat ever made. I simply don’t get it; with its bent plywood shell and black leather upholstery, this 1956 American design classic looks to... Read more... |
TedWednesday, 01 August 2012
Seth MacFarlane is the equal opportunity offender responsible for a trio of animated sitcoms: Family Guy, American Dad! and The Cleveland Show. The hardest-working man in TV comedy is known for his colourfully un-PC style and agreeably obnoxious... Read more... |
theartsdesk Olympics: Steve Prefontaine (times two)Wednesday, 25 July 2012
Movies often come unwittingly in pairs, whether you're talking Capote and Infamous (both about Truman Capote) or Valmont and Dangerous Liaisons (both adapted from the epistolary novel by Laclos). And so it was that the late 1990s saw the... Read more... |
The Dark Knight RisesFriday, 20 July 2012
2012 has so far brought us a couple of notable surprises from the oft-maligned world of comic book adaptations: first came Joss Whedon’s Avengers Assemble with its boisterous banter and then there was depth and pathos from Andrew Garfield in the... Read more... |
CD: The Gaslight Anthem - HandwrittenWednesday, 18 July 2012
Brian Fallon, The Gaslight Anthem’s heart-on-sleeve frontman, would be the first to tell you that there’s nothing complicated to it: big songs with tons of heart; love and death and the last light of fading youth, all to the accompaniment of your... Read more... |
theartsdesk Olympics: Marathon ManTuesday, 17 July 2012
Rather unjustly, this underrated 1976 thriller is best remembered for the dental torture scenes in which Laurence Olivier’s shiny-headed, shiny-spectacled Nazi, Dr Christian Szell, repeatedly asks Dustin Hoffman’s petrified and pain-crazed Levy if... Read more... |
Interview: 10 Questions for Daryl HallSaturday, 14 July 2012
When he joined up with John Oates, Daryl Hall became half of one of the most successful duos in pop history, which has sold upwards of 60 million albums. From the mid-Seventies to the late Eighties, the pair notched six platinum albums and posted a... Read more... |
DetachmentThursday, 12 July 2012
The lugubrious soulfulness of Adrien Brody is not to all tastes, and in many cases is wholly inappropriate, but his casting in Tony Kaye's downbeat meditation on education, or the lack of it, is masterly. Brody plays Henry Barthes, a substitute... Read more... |
