Berlin
A German Life, Bridge Theatre review - Maggie Smith triumphs againSaturday, 13 April 2019
Maggie Smith is not only a national treasure, but every casting director's go-to old bat. Now 84 years young, she is our favourite grande dame, or fantasy grandma. With an acting career of nearly 70 years, an instantly recognisable face and voice,... Read more... |
69th Berlin Film Festival round-up - what a banal BerlinaleTuesday, 19 February 2019
As journalists and critics were enjoying the unseasonably balmy weather in Berlin at the 69th Film Festival, all were wondering – where are all the good films? Surely outgoing festival director Dieter Kosslick would want to conclude his 18-year... Read more... |
Q&A Special: Actor Bruno Ganz on playing HitlerSaturday, 16 February 2019
There is nothing quite like the Iffland-Ring in this country. The property of the Austrian state, for two centuries it has been awarded to the most important German-speaking actor of the age, who after a suitable period nominates his successor and... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Rosa LuxemburgThursday, 31 January 2019
Barbara Sukowa won Best Actress at Cannes in 1986 for her title role in Margarethe von Trotta’s Rosa Luxemburg, and the power of her performance looks every bit as engaging and insistent today. A century after Luxemburg’s death (she was... Read more... |
Dietrich: Natural Duty, Wilton's Music Hall review - elegy for oneWednesday, 21 November 2018
Getting the look right is half the battle: in that, Peter Groom's one-time-Captain Marlene Dietrich is a winner from the start. The looks at the audience nail it too, heavy-lidded and lashed but transfixing, charismatic, winning instant complicity.... Read more... |
Suspiria review - kindly, slow-motion grand guignolThursday, 15 November 2018
The first Suspiria was a sensation, and spectacularly, monomaniacally new. Its young heroine Susie Bannon’s ride from an innately hostile airport through eldritch woods in which a panicked girl ran from her destination, the Markos Academy of Dance,... Read more... |
Berlin Station, More 4 review - spooks in EurolandFriday, 26 October 2018
It’s eight years since Richard Armitage’s character Lucas North died in Spooks, but now Armitage is back undercover as CIA agent Daniel Miller in Berlin Station. Mind you, it’s already been touch and go – Miller was shot in in Berlin’s Potzdamer... Read more... |
Prom 69, Skride, Boston SO, Nelsons / Proms at...Cadogan Hall 8, Berlin Philharmonic Soloists review - sophisticated limitsTuesday, 04 September 2018
Crazy days are here again – many of us are lucky not to have been born when the last collectve insanity blitzed the world – and nothing in Shostakovich seems too outlandish for reality. On the other hand, there's a growing movement to liberate his... Read more... |
Prom 67, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Nelsons / Prom 68, Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko review - frenzy and finesseMonday, 03 September 2018
Did the earth move for us? You bet. Sunday’s two Proms brought fabled visitors to the Royal Albert Hall – first the Boston Symphony Orchestra, then the Berlin Philharmonic for their second concert – but our august guests dispensed with all polite... Read more... |
Prom 66, Wang, Berlin Philharmonic, Petrenko review - intense perfectionSunday, 02 September 2018
Setting aside any reservations about a slight overall timidity in repertoire choices - no problems with that last night - this year's Proms have worked unexpectedly well, above all with their weekend strands. The trump card with the usual roster of... Read more... |
Mission: Impossible - Fallout review - brilliant summer blockbusterMonday, 23 July 2018
This is the second Mission: Impossible movie written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, the first time any director has been called back for an encore on the series. He did a smart job on 2015’s Rogue Nation, but this time he has pulled out... Read more... |
CD: Lotic - PowerWednesday, 11 July 2018
An extraordinary musical movement has been bubbling over from the far left field into the public consciousness in the last couple of years. A very loose international alliance of musicians like Elysia Crampton, GAIKA, Ziúr, Arca, Rabit, Yves Tumor,... Read more... |
