wed 29/05/2024

football

Philippe Parreno, Serpentine Gallery

'Invisibleboy', a 'docu-fantasy' about an illegal child immigrant conjuring up monsters in New York

Lovers of the beautiful game may already be familiar with the name Philippe Parreno, or at least with his best-known work. In 2006 he collaborated with artist Douglas Gordon (24-hour Psycho) on Zidane: A 21st-Century Portrait, a film that trained 17...

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A Playwright of Two Halves: Barrie Rutter on Harold Brighouse

Harold Brighouse was a star writer in his time. Today, he’s viewed as a one-play wonder. Everyone knows Hobson’s Choice, his tale of a Salford cobbler outfoxed by his daughters. A hit in New York before its London debut in 1916, the play has been...

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Teen Undertaker, Channel 4

This quirky, compelling little Cutting Edge film never really worked out what it wanted us to think about what we were seeing, which in the end played to its advantage. Because it avoided the sorry fate – namely, shoehorning its participants into an...

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Vuvuzela: a final note from Berlin

The vuvuzela's long and literally monotonous journey from Soweto to the very epicentre of high European culture is complete. During the World Cup they blew it with incessant vigour on the terraces of South Africa's stadiums. Now they're blowing it...

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Justin Fashanu in Extra Time

Ten years after Justin Fashanu - not only the first openly gay footballer, but the first black player to command a £1 million transfer fee - committed suicide in a lock-up garage in the East End, his former agent, Eric Hall, breezily...

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Singing for Life, BBC Four/ Gazza's Tears, ITV1

Township chorister goes it alone: Thami, 18, at an operatic audition

I once sat in a rehearsal room in a brick-box theatre on the outskirts of Cape Town. The cast was warming up for Carmen. First, the choreographer put 40 mostly black South African singers through a gruelling physical warm-up. Opera singers are...

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OperaShots, Royal Opera

Anyone hoping to take refuge from last night’s football fever in the solemn halls of the Royal Opera House would have scored something of an own goal. Heading the bill for OperaShots – a trio of new operas staged in the intimate Linbury Theatre –...

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Gina Yashere, Udderbelly, SE1

Gina Yashere: the Londoner of Nigerian origin can make even casual racism funny

In the game of musical chairs that has led up to their coverage of the soccer World Cup, BBC and ITV executives appear to have missed a trick; judging by last night’s explosive opening few minutes, in which Gina Yashere gave an expletive-laden...

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Kicks

This is a modest film – only 80 minutes long – with big things to say about the way celebrity warps the lives of all who come into contact with it: not only of the elect few whose faces adorn teenage walls, but also those lonely girls in their...

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One Night in Turin

Why make a documentary about Italia 90? It’s just another tournament that England didn’t win, isn't it? If the World Cup hosted by Italy in 1990 deserves exhumation, it’s for its trickle-down impact on football as we live and breathe it now. Hence...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Artist Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon: Self-portrait as Kurt Cobain, as Andy Warhol, as Myra Hindley, as Marilyn Monroe, 1996

Since winning the Turner Prize in 1996 with Confessions of a Justified Sinner, Douglas Gordon (b. 1966) has lived in Germany, France, New York and Germany again. But in accent and attitude, he remains a Glaswegian. Those roots are being reaffirmed...

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Football and Film: United or Damned?

There’s a new British film coming soon called Dead Man Running. It features the rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis “No Relation of the King of Pop” Jackson) as an American loan shark who, suffering in the financial downturn, visits these shores to lean...

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