Canada
Memory Box review - exquisitely made drama set in LebanonFriday, 21 January 2022
Memory Box is that rare thing, a glimpse into a lost world from its traumatised inhabitants. Made by the Lebanese artist-filmmakers, Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (a husband and wife team), it’s an intergenerational drama split between Beirut... Read more... |
How to Survive an Apocalypse, Finborough Theatre review - millenarian millennialsMonday, 04 October 2021
Despite its painfully relevant title, How To Survive An Apocalypse was written in 2016. If only Canadian playwright Jordan Hall knew, eh? The end times aren’t just creeping but hurtling towards us, these days. Luckily for those weary of Covid... Read more... |
Album: BADBADNOTGOOD - Talk MemorySaturday, 02 October 2021
Jazz’s most popular expressions today stand on or just over its borders: Thundercat’s rubbery bass virtuosity and dreamy laptop soul, Robert Glasper’s improv R&B, Squarepusher’s spontaneous electronica, Snarky Puppy’s jam-band anthems, GoGo... Read more... |
Mouthpiece review - double entendre in TorontoWednesday, 10 March 2021
Cassandra and her sister – or perhaps they’re friends or lovers – seem extraordinarily in tune. Like choreographed dancers, they move precisely in unison, down to tripping over their scarves at the same moment or flopping drunkenly into bed together... Read more... |
Album: The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm WarningsFriday, 29 January 2021
The title is in keeping with those of previous portentously handled albums from the Montréal art-rockers. There was their breakthrough 2007 set The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse and 2010’s The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night. The latter’s... Read more... |
Blu-ray: PolytechniqueTuesday, 22 December 2020
The French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve is best known for mainstream films like Sicario, Arrival, and Blade Runner 2049, stylishly expressive in their harnessing of alienating terrains, notably deserts and plains. Their claustrophobic... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Brahms, Anna Höstman, Mozart, Mark SimpsonSaturday, 05 December 2020
Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4 Australian Chamber Orchestra/Richard Tognetti (ABC Classic)Why these live performances from 2015 and 2013 have waited so long for release is a mystery; this is the best Brahms symphony disc I’ve heard in ages.... Read more... |
Possessor review - death by virtual realityThursday, 26 November 2020
Many have struggled to bring a new slant to the horror genre, but writer-director Brandon Cronenberg has managed it with Possessor, his second full-length feature. Being the son of David Cronenberg, a pioneer of so-called “body horror”, obviously... Read more... |
The Lie review - icily intriguing until it isn'tSaturday, 10 October 2020
Moral reckonings don't come much more serious than the one that propels The Lie, in which a family must deal with a murder perpetrated by their daughter. Will Jay (a weary-looking Peter Sarsgaard) and Rebecca (the wonderful Mireille Enos) hand... Read more... |
Bach’s The Art of Fugue, Angela Hewitt, Wigmore Hall – the many voices of humanityTuesday, 29 September 2020
How do they do it? Bach and Angela Hewitt, I mean, transfixing and focusing the audience in the Wigmore Hall – at home, too, hopefully, thanks to the livestreaming– through 13 and three-quarter fugues and four canons, all starting in the same key... Read more... |
Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedyMonday, 28 September 2020
Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has composed little circular poems, similar (in style though not sentiment) to the posies you sometimes find inscribed on the inside of rings. He... Read more... |
Album: This Dream of You – Diana KrallSaturday, 19 September 2020
“Produced by Tommy LiPuma.” That phrase has appeared on just about every Diana Krall album since the summer of 1995, when the Cleveland-born mogul arrived at the GRP label – it would be his sixth and last music industry affiliation –... Read more... |
