drugs
Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool PlaceMonday, 14 November 2011Ken Kesey is one of these characters who gets filed under "Counterculture Legend", alongside the likes of Hunter Thompson and Abbie Hoffman, though his accomplishments are somewhat amorphous. His early achievements as a novelist are easier to... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Musician Cosmo JarvisSunday, 13 November 2011Cosmo Jarvis (b 1989) was born in New Jersey but grew up in Devon. He has produced two albums, Humasyouhitch/Sonofabitch (2009) and Is The World Strange or Am I Strange? (2011), that combine incisive lyricism, goofy humour, rap, rock, terrace-chant... Read more... |
The Rum DiaryThursday, 10 November 2011In later years, when callow reporters would be sent to interview the wrecked legend Hunter S Thompson in his Colorado compound, at some point in the weekend, in between the drugs, booze and random gunfire that punctuated his days, the Gonzo... Read more... |
Oslo, August 31st/ The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)Friday, 04 November 2011Oslo, August 31st and The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) share more than a release date. One is a melancholic existential meditation and the other ostensibly a horror film, but both openly draw from earlier films, focus on an outsider unable to... Read more... |
Top Boy, Channel 4Thursday, 03 November 2011One striking fact about Ronan Bennett's punishing four-part East End gang drama is that, so far, there hasn't been any sign of a policeman. No scruffy, down-at-heel detective with a chip on his shoulder, no thuggish Flying Squad heavies, and... Read more... |
JunkheartsThursday, 03 November 2011British film-makers tend towards bipolarity. Where French cinema is broadly speaking about the middle classes, we tend to get films about one thing or the other. The national fixation with the past supplies stories about how the nabobs of yore lived... Read more... |
Miss BalaFriday, 28 October 2011Miss Bala, just to clear it up at the start, does not concern itself with beauty pageants. Or not like Miss Congeniality. Beauty is indeed involved in the form of Laura, a pretty young Mexican woman from a poor family who aspires to win the crown of... Read more... |
DVD: George Harrison - Living in the Material WorldFriday, 07 October 2011Martin Scorsese’s mammoth, authorised survey of the life of George Harrison is a strange old thing. Deeply moving, poetic, full of love, wit and warmth, it's also at times oddly assembled and, at a shade over three and a half hours, runs wide but... Read more... |
Opinion: Why can't the British make urban movies?Sunday, 11 September 2011A spectre is haunting Britain - the spectre of a film called Big Fat Gypsy Gangster. Poised for release in just over a week’s time, this Ricky Grover vanity project is described generously as “Monty Python meets Snatch”, chronicling the life and... Read more... |
R: Hit First, Hit HardestWednesday, 24 August 2011You must have come across those “happiness quotient” surveys, which judge the relative achievements on the contentment front across a series of countries. The last one I recall gave Denmark the Number One spot, with a remarkable 96 per cent classing... Read more... |
The GuardWednesday, 17 August 2011Directing and writing his first full-length feature, John Michael McDonagh fully exploits the wild and windswept landscapes of Connemara, and similarly extracts maximum value from his leading man, Brendan Gleeson. Perhaps he picked up tips from his... Read more... |
Opinion: Why are we so ghoulishly obsessed with self-destruction?Tuesday, 26 July 2011By and large, Adele Adkins chooses to avoid the limelight, and therefore little is known of either her personal life or her indulgences, whatever they may be. The spectacular success of 21 suggests that her audience couldn't care less either way,... Read more... |