Mexico
Chloe Aridjis: Sea Monsters review - a teenage bestiarySunday, 03 February 2019
We've all been there. The disappointing fling. The gently shattered illusions. The abortive holiday eliding languor and boredom. Teenage ennui. Revels peopled by runaways. Talking animals. Talking animals? Well, fine. Not quite.Sea Monsters is Chloe... Read more... |
Frida Kahlo: Making Her Self Up, V&A review - appearances aren't everythingTuesday, 03 July 2018
When in 2004 Frida Kahlo’s bedroom – sealed on the command of her husband Diego Rivera for 50 years from her death – was opened, a trove of clothes and personal items was discovered. They shed new light on the life of this iconic Mexican... Read more... |
Sicario: Day of the Soldado review - violent, explosive and nihilistic thrillerThursday, 28 June 2018
The issue of immigrants being smuggled across the Mexican border into the USA is currently live and inflammatory, and this second instalment of the feds-versus-drugs cartels saga hurls us right into the centre of it. This explosive thriller is... Read more... |
Big Sky, Big Dreams, Big Art: Made in the USA, BBC Four review - unexpected facts aplentyThursday, 24 May 2018
“Oh say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light” was a vision of the American flag, that star-spangled banner, riding proud from Francis Scott Key’s patriotic poem of 1814 based on an episode in the War of 1812. His sentiments were decades later... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: CocoTuesday, 22 May 2018
The brightness and colour are deceptive; at its heart, Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina’s Coco is an affecting reflection on death, remembrance and the redemptive power of music, dressed up as a frenetic and gag-stuffed Disney comedy. I’d place it... Read more... |
CD: Sonido Gallo Negro - Mambo CósmicoMonday, 02 April 2018
How many albums today feature a sorceress on the harp, an instrument more often played by winged angels? "La Bruja de Texcoco", a practising witch and healer, is one of several Mexican musicians who join Sonido Gallo Negro in their latest and very... Read more... |
Blue Planet II, BBC One review - just how fragile?Monday, 11 December 2017
The eel is dying. Its body flits through a series of complicated knots which become increasingly grotesque torques. Immersed in a pool of brine — concentrated salt water five times denser than seawater — it is succumbing to toxic shock. As biomatter... Read more... |
Snowfall, BBC Two review - blizzard hits South CentralMonday, 09 October 2017
An American TV show about drugs and drug dealers? How frightfully novel. At least The Deuce (showing now on Sky Atlantic) is about pornography instead.Anyhow Snowfall has been created by John Singleton, of Boyz n the Hood fame, and whisks us back to... Read more... |
Mexrrissey, Brighton DomeSaturday, 28 January 2017
The name Mexrrissey may be unfamiliar, but the concept of a Mexican band playing mariachi-style versions of songs by Morrissey and The Smiths has brought out a decent-sized audience on a freezing January night. Their set is uneven and musically... Read more... |
El Niño, LSO, Adams, BarbicanMonday, 05 December 2016
Second and third times lucky: after the migraine-inducing multimedia overload of Peter Sellars's premiere production of El Niño, first seen in London in 2003 and subsequently excoriated in eloquent prose by the composer himself, John Adams's layered... Read more... |
The ShallowsFriday, 12 August 2016
Forty-one years since Jaws chomped its way into celluloid history comes a new addition to the shark film genre with The Shallows, in which Gossip Girl star Blake Lively plays a Texan surfer who goes mano a mano with a hungry fish. How much more does... Read more... |
Eisenstein in GuanajuatoSaturday, 16 April 2016
This is an unashamed, fulsome, extravagant tribute from Peter Greenaway to his cinema idol. The British director – though that description is probably more point of origin these days than allegiance – has long acclaimed his Russian-Soviet... Read more... |
