India
DVD: The JourneyTuesday, 29 January 2013
Poetic restraint dominates Ligy J. Pullapally’s 2004 Kerala-set lesbian drama The Journey (Sancharram). Based on a true story of a relationship between two young women that ended in one's suicide (a conclusion that’s left open in the film), its... Read more... |
Midnight's ChildrenWednesday, 26 December 2012
It’s always the second-rate fiction which makes first-rate films, because there’s nothing to lose but plot. Midnight’s Children, lest anyone be allowed to forget, is first-rate fiction. It has won the Booker, the Booker of Bookers and James Tait... Read more... |
Remembering Ravi Shankar, 1920-2012Thursday, 13 December 2012
While living in Bombay in the late 1940s, betrayed by a business partner and his first marriage in the midst of painful implosion, Ravi Shankar decided to commit suicide. At the eleventh hour, a holy man, who happened to be passing by, knocked on... Read more... |
Much Ado About Nothing, Noël Coward TheatreFriday, 28 September 2012
Never quite at the top of the Shakespearean canon, Much Ado About Nothing now seems more vital and adaptable than ever – and vastly darker than, say, Kenneth Branagh’s sun-kissed screen romp acknowledged back in 1993. The cult director Joss Whedon... Read more... |
London Mela, Gunnersbury ParkTuesday, 21 August 2012
The look for many young Asian guys in deepest west London appears to focus on how thin they can sculpt their goatees. Well-muscled, chiselled even, sporting either a bowl-crop or one of those spiky, gelled, junior estate agent haircuts, and clad in... Read more... |
Bamboo Blues, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, Barbican TheatreSaturday, 23 June 2012
Premiered in 2007, Bamboo Blues was generated by a visit to Kolkata; and with the simplest of means, designer Peter Pabst conjures the vast landscapes of India. The first half unfolds against a backdrop of white muslin curtains rippling in the wind... Read more... |
Globe to Globe: All's Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare's GlobeFriday, 25 May 2012
It's both easy and fashionable to render ironic, or scoff at, the title of All's Well That Ends Well. This is the Shakespeare "comedy" in which the rabidly obsessed Helena finally ensnares her none-too-doting Bertram in a putative happy ending that... Read more... |
Felicity Kendal's Indian Shakespeare Quest, BBC TwoThursday, 17 May 2012
It's a truism of modern television that a programme rarely gets made without a celebrity being attached, but in this case there was a very good reason for Felicity Kendal being on board. Her parents, Laura and Geoffrey Kendal, founded Shakespeareana... Read more... |
All in Good TimeSaturday, 12 May 2012
Replace the charmingly quirky with the merely cute and you have All in Good Time, Nigel Cole's film of the popular 2007 National Theatre play by Ayub Khan-Din about a British-Asian family confronted with the kind of crisis for which happy... Read more... |
South Asian festival at SouthbankMonday, 19 March 2012Southbank Centre’s third annual Alchemy festival returns 12-22 April with a mix of music, dance, literature, film, fashion and design reflecting the economic and cultural landscape of the Indian subcontinent. The centre's Thames-side venues and... Read more... |
TrishnaFriday, 09 March 2012
Literary adaptations are a godsend to an industry that loves a good story but is too busy blowing the budget on chase sequences and explosions to pay a decent screenwriter. But among the glossy, desperately earnest adaptations (last year’s Jane Eyre... Read more... |
Mixed Media, Haunch of VenisonMonday, 05 March 2012
Group shows can be strained: the rubric can be so narrow that it has to be stretched to accommodate the artists at hand. That is one reason why Haunch of Venison's new show, Mixed Media, is so pleasing: it features contemporary sculpture with an... Read more... |
