China
Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea, BBC OneFriday, 12 April 2013
The cup of tea is a national institution that brings comfort and good cheer to millions. So is Victoria Wood. Blend them in a pot and you’ve got a pleasing brew called Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea. It might not have been so. When Wood last... Read more... |
The Man with the Iron FistsThursday, 06 December 2012
As anyone who saw The Next Three Days, A Good Year, or Proof of Life will know, Russell Crowe has frequently been one to squander his talent in mediocre or plain terrible fare. His latest, The Man with the Iron Fists, is a 1970s-inspired martial... Read more... |
Art of Change: New Directions from China, Hayward GallerySunday, 09 September 2012
At the Hayward Gallery a young woman falls over backwards; her flight is magically arrested at a gravity-defying point of imbalance. Since she is blinking, one can safely assume that she is alive, present, and human rather than a waxwork or an... Read more... |
Ai Weiwei: Never SorryFriday, 10 August 2012
Every year, FHM produces its 100 sexiest women of the year list. It follows a simple formula, since sexiness, as determined by the magazine’s readers, is predicated on fame – a particular type of fleeting, red-top tabloid fame. So this year, top of... Read more... |
A Simple LifeFriday, 03 August 2012
Plenty of great films have been made about old age, about the humiliations, emotions, fragilities and joys of the end of life. Wild Strawberries, Harold and Maude, Venus, Driving Miss Daisy, even Pixar’s Up probably has a claim on this category, but... Read more... |
Barenboim on Beethoven: Nine Symphonies That Changed the World, BBC TwoSunday, 29 July 2012
If he isn't careful, Daniel Barenboim is going to find himself on a plinth in Trafalgar Square. He was feted at the Olympic opening ceremony as a great humanitarian, and his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra is being held up as a model for how music... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Titus Andronicus, Shakespeare's GlobeTuesday, 08 May 2012
The demands of Titus Andronicus are probably at odds with the constraints of the Globe to Globe season: a travelling troupe would find it hard to get 80 gallons of fake blood through Customs. Nor are they likely to be furnished with the sort of... Read more... |
Yuja Wang, Queen Elizabeth HallWednesday, 02 May 2012
Let no one tell you that Chinese pianists can't play with passion. Yuja Wang ran the full gamut of emotions in last night's Queen Elizabeth Hall recital from the tender to the rhapsodic. But mostly she channelled her energies to delivering some of... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: Richard III, Shakespeare's GlobeMonday, 30 April 2012
When Zhang Dongyu’s charismatic Richard III rose from the dead to take his bows for Sunday’s spellbinding afternoon performance by the National Theatre of China, the actor paused, remaining on his knees to kiss the stage of the Globe. It was a... Read more... |
Wild Swans, Young Vic TheatreSaturday, 21 April 2012
The Young Vic together with American Repertory Theater, Boston have taken on a huge challenge in staging the lengthy yet gripping memoir by Chinese writer Jung Chang that became an instant success when first published in 1991. Wild Swans was one of... Read more... |
Song Dong: Waste Not, The Curve, BarbicanWednesday, 29 February 2012
A remarkably tidy parade of thousands upon thousands of objects, neatly grouped into their categories – soap, plastic bottles, cooking pots and utensils, empty cardboard boxes, shoes, flower pots, gloves, string, to name but a few – Waste Not is a... Read more... |
Snow Flower and the Secret FanSaturday, 05 November 2011
World cinema – like its cousin world music – is an awkward generic term that we generally apply to the output of those far-off countries or cultures about which we know (and perhaps if we are really honest, care) little. Watching movies with... Read more... |
