America
Whip ItMonday, 05 April 2010
Whip It is not about nefarious S&M practices, nor the art of patisserie, nor even dog racing - although it has trace elements of all of the above. Instead, Drew Barrymore's sweet and swaggering maiden trip as director is a confection set in... Read more... |
Johnny Mercer: The Dream's on Me, BBC FourSunday, 04 April 2010
Jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood, who co-produced this film with the BBC's Arena, clearly harbours a particular regard for songwriter, singer, impresario and record company mogul Johnny Mercer. When Eastwood made his film of John Berendt's book... Read more... |
theartsdesk at Savannah Music FestivalWednesday, 31 March 2010
Over four days I've gorged on some world-class music. If you take a pretty city in the full swing of spring, add a dose of Southern US hospitality, some exquisite venues, and a music promoter able to garner the cream of musical talent from across... Read more... |
Requiem for Detroit?, BBC TwoSaturday, 13 March 2010
The only time I've ever been to Detroit was in 2004, in pursuit of assorted rock stars on the Vote for Change tour. Reader, it was weird. The atmosphere in the deserted streets was deathly, as if an invading army had swarmed into town, committed... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallFriday, 12 March 2010
Adams began with two Debussy preludes swept by a different kind of wind in Colin Matthews's ingenious, luminous orchestrations. Well, windswept was the idea, but there was no more elemental scouring here than by all accounts there had been in the... Read more... |
London Symphony Orchestra, Adams, Barbican HallMonday, 08 March 2010
What would you imagine the composer John Adams might choose to conduct – apart, that is, from a little something he himself made earlier? Well, the first of two London Symphony Orchestra concerts this week brought no big surprises: Sibelius’ Sixth... Read more... |
The Lure of Las Vegas, BBC TwoSunday, 07 March 2010
“The Mob made Vegas,” says its mayor since 1999, Oscar B Goodman. And he should know, having defended plenty of mobsters in his time when - he and I are equally quick to point out - he was a defence attorney and didn’t know what they were really up... Read more... |
Capitalism: A Love StoryTuesday, 23 February 2010
If Michael Moore's new film were a person, it would be diagnosed with a severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. His Cook's Tour through the ills of capitalism spans, inter alia: forced repossessions; worker lock-ins; the breadline salaries of... Read more... |
Latin Music USA, BBC FourSunday, 21 February 2010
Latin Music USA is a long-overdue exploration of the Latino influence on American popular music. The four-part BBC Four Friday-night series zooms in on the bicultural American populations rooted in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Mexico, but living in their... Read more... |
Storyville: The Most Dangerous Man in America, BBC FourTuesday, 16 February 2010
On Daniel Ellsberg's first day in his new job at the Pentagon in 1964, working under Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara, the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred. This engagement between American destroyers and North Vietnamese torpedo boats was used... Read more... |
DVDs Round-Up 4Saturday, 13 February 2010
Our February DVD releases are light on stars, heavy on variety. We range from the Amazon rain forest to female wrestling and killer futons (we're not joking) in Japan and clandestine video reportage in Burma; from Pushkin’s Russia to Darwin’s... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Sarah Lamb, Royal Ballet Cover GirlThursday, 11 February 2010
You don’t usually find ballerinas in Monument Valley. Cowboys, maybe, but not a pale, slender girl in a glistening golden tutu alighting like an exotic butterfly briefly on a silk-shod toe in the very same red dust that John Wayne rattled across in... Read more... |
