sun 18/05/2025

New York

Mad Men: Series 4 Finale, BBC Four

And so Mad Men 4 rode into the sunset, Don perched on yet another horse (sorry, love interest), a fifth series in production, and it’s all become a soap opera rather than a drama series. It should be called Madly Men. Fast diminishing returns, one...

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Chico and Rita

On-screen kissing rarely works; even the sexiest, most practised Hollywood couples usually can’t manage it. But when the eponymous Chico and Rita turn to each other against smoochy strains of “Besame Mucho” and their lips touch for the first time,...

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theartsdesk in Brooklyn: The CMJ Festival

Nobody really knows what CMJ stands for, but then few of New York’s residents know of the five-day music festival’s existence either. Involving more than 1200 bands and 75 cross-borough venues, CMJ is for the real music fans - dare I say, geeks even...

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Photo Gallery: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

A legend in the making: Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo in Greenwich Village, 1963

A near contemporary of the great jazz photographer Herman Leonard, who died last August, Don Hunstein has amassed a formidable collection of images of some of the most indelible names in music, from Miles Davis and John Coltrane to Johnny Cash,...

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Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

The long-delayed sequel has earned no more than a small, insignificant footnote in movie history. Psycho II, Gregory’s Two Girls and Texasville, to name only three disparate examples, were all superfluous post-scriptums to much venerated, much...

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The Big Fellah, Lyric Hammersmith

Finbar Lynch put his work with Pinter to good use as the big guy of the title in Richard Bean's play

When cultural talk drifts toward Mr Big, thoughts tend to turn to Sex and the City's Chris Noth, whose New York is world enough and time away from the doomed metropolis populated by the "big fellah" played by Finbar Lynch in Richard Bean's play of...

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The Other Guys

No modern comedy worth its salt misses the chance to keep you chortling as the end credits roll. Bloopers, bleeps and assorted outtakes off the cutting-room floor generally provide the fare. In The Other Guys we take a different tack. Whizzy...

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Mad Men, Series 4, BBC Four

That sobbing musical theme resumes, so does that hospital-white dreamlike cartoon of a male figure tumbling in a Hitchcockian fall from grace past huge ads of poster girls. Actually it’s almost as much Milton as it is Hitchcock. I say that to be...

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My Summer Reading: Sculptor Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter (An Exploded View) 1991:

Sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker is our fourth guest to choose some favourite books for holiday reading. Born in 1956, she is known in part for her suspended sculptures that appear to capture the moment of explosion, as well as for...

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theartsdesk in New York: Over the Sea to Art Getaway Island

Art Island: just 800 yards off the Manhattan skyline, an unattainable realtor's dream

When it’s 33 degrees and rising, boarding a ferry in New York has to be a good plan. One of the newest and weirdest of the city’s watery destinations is Governors Island (no apostrophe - it was removed in 1783 when the British, who used it to house...

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Edinburgh Fringe: Jason Cook/ Lee Kern/ Barrow Street Theatre

Jason Cook: The Geordie comic's show is about his suspected heart attack last year

He may describe himself as “a Geordie chancer”, but in reality Jason Cook is a warm comic whose material is utterly devoid of cynicism. Yet he’s far from being pious - he spices up his act with caustic barbs for deserving targets (quite often...

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Ayrton Senna, the opera

Since his death at the San Marino Grand Prix in 1994, the legend of charismatic Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna has grown to almost mythic proportions. Last year the three-time world champion was voted Best Driver in F1 History in a drivers...

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