love
SubmarineWednesday, 16 March 2011
Comedian Richard Ayoade’s kinetic, charismatic and accomplished directorial debut follows an introspective adolescent with his feet clamped firmly on dry land but with his head all at sea. In Submarine, our protagonist haplessly negotiates the... Read more... |
Norwegian WoodThursday, 10 March 2011
Published in 1987, Norwegian Wood was the novel that turned Haruki Murakami from writer to celebrity in his native Japan. With over 12 million copies sold internationally and a cult of devoted readers waiting fretfully, the notoriously unfilmable... Read more... |
TempestMonday, 28 February 2011
Shakespeare’s The Tempest is apparently a gift for the big screen. It's full of tricks, illusions, two half-humans and of course kicks off with a stonker of a storm: any film-maker might, particularly in this hi-tech epoch, give his or her eye teeth... Read more... |
theartsdesk Guide to Valentine's DayMonday, 14 February 2011
Whether it’s consolation, stimulation, or just some old-fashioned romance you’re after this Valentine’s Day, theartsdesk’s team of writers (with a little help from a certain Bard from Stratford) have got it covered. Exhibitions to stir the heart,... Read more... |
DVD: The TownThursday, 03 February 2011
The Town narrowly missed out on an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, and revisiting it on DVD I reckon it was hard done-by. True, it's possible to pigeonhole it under Heist Thriller, but it's a particularly fine one, and it's much more besides.... Read more... |
Elgar's Enigma - A Love Child Named Pearl?Wednesday, 26 January 2011
UPDATE 2015: Four years ago, in January 2011, I wrote this article about the music critic and biographer Michael Kennedy's search for the missing portion of Elgar's life. It identified a Mrs Dora Nelson as the composer's mistress and mother of a... Read more... |
Blue ValentineWednesday, 12 January 2011
The American indie Blue Valentine was heralded in October by a sexy W magazine cover of its stars - Ryan Gosling smooching Michelle Williams’s temple as she parts her becrimsoned lips and gazes provocatively at us - and the restrictive NC-17... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, English National Ballet, London ColiseumSunday, 09 January 2011
Busy, busy, busy tends to have been the watchword of Rudolf Nureyev’s elaborate choreographies. Prokofiev, as the most direct of musical dramatists, demanded streamlining from Sergey Radlov’s complicated scenario in 1935, but Nureyev tends to have... Read more... |
Love & Other DrugsTuesday, 28 December 2010
It’s difficult to know how to categorise Love & Other Drugs; is it a rom-com, a biopic, a melodrama, a satire or a hard-hitting attack on the influence that mega pharmaceutical companies have on America’s healthcare system? The film’s makers,... Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, RSC/RoundhouseFriday, 17 December 2010
A night when a fresh fall of snow was fluttering from the heavens could hardly have felt more fitting for the opening of this Shakespearean romance – particularly since David Farr’s production for the RSC, first seen in Stratford in 2009, so... Read more... |
Love Story, Duchess TheatreMonday, 06 December 2010
It's not easy these days to stay the course on stage, with one leading female character after another of late failing to make it to the final curtain. I'm thinking of such otherwise diverse heroines as Shakespeare's Juliet and Andrew Lloyd Webber's... Read more... |
Romeo and Juliet, RSC/RoundhouseFriday, 03 December 2010
Can you go home again? That's the question that will be hanging over the Royal Shakespeare Company's first residency at the Roundhouse since their "History Play" cycle stormed north London over two years ago, reminding those lucky enough to catch it... Read more... |
