Hitler
Emil and the Detectives, National TheatreThursday, 05 December 2013
Read Erich Kästner’s 1928 novel about young Emil Tischbein and the Berlin boys he enlists to catch a thief, and you’ll come away feeling warm if slightly incredulous at the strong moral compass of all the kids and most of the adults. Gerhard... Read more... |
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Duchess TheatreThursday, 26 September 2013
Arturo Ui, king of the Chicago cabbage trade, is Brecht’s Richard III. Egad, he even speaks in iambic pentameters, with a fair few nods at Shakespeare, though a certain cowlick and moustache locate him firmly at the centre of the 20th century... Read more... |
Company of Heroes 2Friday, 28 June 2013
Fusing the intensity of first-person shooters like the Call of Duty series with top-down strategy games doesn't immediately seem a good fit. First-person shooters work because you respond viscerally to bullets flying past your face and the fear of... Read more... |
Unreported World: Vlad's Army, Channel 4Saturday, 05 November 2011
The next time you find yourself mumbling unkind words about the apathetic youth of today, or else deriding the muddle-headed protests of twonkish Charlie Gilmour types, stop and think about the Nashi. A right-wing Russian youth organisation... Read more... |
The Man Who Crossed Hitler, BBC TwoSunday, 21 August 2011
Out of the blue, in the middle of the midsummer slump, came this unusual and original one-off play (I say "play" because it would convert naturally to the stage). Finding a new angle from which to explore Hitler and the Nazis might seem impossible,... Read more... |
The Emperor of Atlantis, Arcola TheatreWednesday, 17 August 2011
We critics often find ourselves "embarrassed by historical facts", as Craig Raine once put it. Raine was trying to explain why so many people still value Wilfred Owen's poetry - to him, the most overrated corpus of the 20th century. "[Owen's]... Read more... |
Sarah's KeyTuesday, 02 August 2011
History rears its harrowing head in Sarah's Key, a sometimes galumphing film that lingers in the mind not least because of the terrible tale it has to tell. Reminding us that the atrocities of the Holocaust weren't any one country's exclusive... Read more... |
DVD: Speer and Hitler: The Devil's ArchitectMonday, 06 June 2011
Albert Speer was Hitler’s most high-ranking war minister, but just how much was he complicit in Nazi atrocities? Thirty years after his death, and 16 after Gitta Sereny’s controversial biography, Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth, Speer remains a... Read more... |
Perspectives: Hugh Laurie Down by the River, ITV1/ Operation Crossbow, BBC TwoSunday, 15 May 2011
America has been very good to Hugh Laurie. His starring role as Dr Gregory House has shot him to the top of the earnings tree in US television, while comprehensively demolishing existing preconceptions of him as the blissfully idiotic Bertie Wooster... Read more... |
The Damnation of Faust, English National OperaFriday, 06 May 2011
Anything goes in the wacky world of Berlioz’s Faust story. It’s a heaven and hell of a lot better than Gounod’s, but it isn’t an opera, it isn’t an oratorio and it certainly isn’t the gospel according to Goethe. So Terry Gilliam, ENO’s latest wild-... Read more... |
DVD: The King's SpeechThursday, 05 May 2011
It just worked. The rave reactions from critics and audiences, and the hail of Baftas, Oscars and Golden Globes which showered down on it, made it clear that The King's Speech wasn't just any old movie, but a rare moment in cinema history. It cost... Read more... |
Upstairs Downstairs, BBC OneMonday, 27 December 2010
Thirty-five years after Rose Buck took what she thought was her final nostalgic stroll through the empty rooms of 165 Eaton Place in Belgravia, where she had served the Bellamy family for four decades, Jean Marsh has brought Rose back home in the... Read more... |
