New York
Blu-ray/DVD: Dance, Girl, DanceWednesday, 29 July 2020
RKO’s Dance, Girl, Dance was remarkable as a vehicle for two emerging stars, Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball, that stealthily radicalised its backstage setting and tried to slap moviegoers out of their comfort zone – probably the reason it... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: A Rainy Day in New YorkTuesday, 21 July 2020
“Know thyself” is the theme of A Rainy Day in New York. Woody Allen’s 48th film as writer-director, is – despite what you may have heard – at once his funniest and most reflective movie in years. Either wilfully archaic or stubbornly nostalgic... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Scorsese ShortsMonday, 20 July 2020
At this year’s Oscars Bong Joon Ho brought the audience to its feet in honour of the director whose words had struck a chord with him as a film student. The comment, simple but difficult to adhere to in the cut-throat, risk-averse movie business,... Read more... |
Terri White: Coming Undone review - a British journalist unravels in NYCSunday, 05 July 2020
The journalistic addiction-memoir is a crowded genre these days: Details editor Dan Perez chronicles his massive intake of Vicodin and other opioids in As Needed for Pain; New York Times columnist Eilene Zimmerman pieces together her husband’s drug... Read more... |
Hamilton, Disney+ review - puts us all in the room where it happenedWednesday, 01 July 2020
The movie adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights was meant to hit cinemas this summer, but, in response to Covid-19, has been put back to 2021. Instead, we get the early release on Disney+ of Miranda’s Hamilton – filmed, NT Live style,... Read more... |
The Last Five Years, The Other Palace Digital review - socially distanced heartbreakFriday, 26 June 2020
A musical featuring two people who are physically separated? Jason Robert Brown’s work is a shutdown natural – as this new digital theatre version demonstrates. Lauren Samuels and Danny Becker, who play doomed lovers Cathy and Jamie, recorded their... Read more... |
Theatre Lockdown Special 10: Epic plays from the National Theatre and Broadway alongside voices raised in protestThursday, 18 June 2020
As lockdown continues, National Theatre at Home has announced its final sequence of plays, and several of the very best are being saved for last. That certainly applies to this week's offering, Small Island, whose dissection of Britain's racist past... Read more... |
Classical music/Opera direct to home 15 - opening up at different ratesFriday, 12 June 2020
It's taken time, but at last we have two major musical figures speaking up for cultural institutions in dire straits. Following a crucial, detailed article by Charlotte Higgins in The Guardian, Simon Rattle and Mark Elder have finally taken up the... Read more... |
What We Do in the Shadows, BBC Two review - the vampires of Staten Island are backFriday, 12 June 2020
The first series of What We Do in the Shadows, Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s mockumentary about vampires in Staten Island (a TV spin-off from their cult New Zealand-located film) was a joy, and although it’s a hard act to follow, it’s... Read more... |
A Rainy Day in New York review - one of Woody's later, patchy onesThursday, 04 June 2020
Woody Allen’s filmography, like Michael Caine’s, is remorseless, accepting mediocre work to mine more gems than most. Even after his career and this film’s planned 2018 release became collateral damage to #MeToo and a revived child abuse allegation... Read more... |
Can You Keep A Secret? review - a bumpy rideFriday, 01 May 2020
Featherweight is one thing, brainless is another. Can You Keep A Secret?, the romcom adapted by screenwriter Peter Hutchings from the 2003 novel by Sophie Kinsella, uneasily straddles the two until a conclusion that goes off the rails... Read more... |
Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration, Broadway.com/YouTube review - slick, often sombre, but when funny, hilariousTuesday, 28 April 2020
Maybe you can't compare incomparables, but it was instructive to watch this Broadway lockdown gala feting nonagenarian Stephen Sondheim a night after the Metropolitan Opera's galaxy of stars welcoming us into their homes. More slick, no doubt (once... Read more... |
