Trump
CD: Sleater-Kinney - The Center Won't HoldThursday, 22 August 2019
This album’s title began as a reaction to fractiousness under Trump, but gained more intimate meaning when drummer Janet Weiss quit Sleater-Kinney shortly before release. With production by St Vincent’s Annie Clark pushing these knotty indie-rock... Read more... |
CD: School Of Language - 45Monday, 22 July 2019
Finding snapshots to characterise Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign and its aftermath is a tall order. There are so many, and assembling them could result in a wearying cavalcade of the all-too familiar. Whether in book form – such as Michael... Read more... |
The Brink review – behind the scenes with Steve BannonSaturday, 13 July 2019
Donald Trump’s former strategist, alt-right propagandist and all-round provocateur Steve Bannon comes under the spotlight of a smart, dynamic, behind-closed-doors documentary, as he attempts to turn his brand of far-right populism into a global... Read more... |
Years and Years, BBC One review - ambitious but amorphousWednesday, 15 May 2019
As the double-edged Chinese proverb has it, “may you live in interesting times.” Screenwriter Russell T Davies evidently thanks that’s exactly where we’re at, and his new six-part drama Years and Years (BBC One) is a bold, sprawling but – as far as... Read more... |
Chimerica, Channel 4 review - fake news, true dramaThursday, 18 April 2019
Chimerica is a stage-to-screen adaptation that has certainly kept up with the times. When it opened at the Almeida back in 2013 – a West End transfer followed, along with an Olivier award for Best New Play – Lucy Kirkwood’s drama was (very... Read more... |
Eden, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs review - thoughtful commentary on people and principlesSaturday, 23 February 2019
"It's gonna be the best golf course in the world," a man in an Aertex shirt and a bright red baseball cap is assuring us. "The best. I guarantee it." You can tell he's the kind of person who thinks talking quickly and loudly is the same thing as... Read more... |
Sweat, Donmar Warehouse review - America at once fractured and fractiousThursday, 20 December 2018
A tremendous year for American theatre on the London stage is resoundingly capped by Sweat, the Lynn Nottage Pulitzer prize-winner that folds the personal and the political into a collective requiem for a riven country. But the wounding if sometimes... Read more... |
Reporting Trump's First Year: the Fourth Estate, BBC Two review - all hands on deck at the Gray LadyMonday, 25 June 2018
The cataclysm of Donald Trump’s election was like a second 9/11 for the East Coast elite (and not just them, obviously). It was a world turned upside down, the centre couldn’t hold, and, worst of all, why did nobody see it coming?Nowhere was it felt... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The PostFriday, 18 May 2018
Spielberg’s prequel to All the President’s Men was filmed at speed, and aimed squarely at the press-hating Trump, not the late Tricky Dick. This contemporary intent is already fading. What remains is the director’s second return, after Munich, to... Read more... |
Building the Wall, Park Theatre review - the nature of nightmareSunday, 06 May 2018
Writer Robert Schenkkan’s Building the Wall imagines modern America in the not-too-distant future. The date is 22nd November 2019 and following an attack on Times Square in which 17 people were killed, martial law has been imposed. Demands for... Read more... |
The Final Year review - Greg Barker documents Obama's last year in officeFriday, 19 January 2018
"The Times They Are A-Changin'" has never sounded so menacing. The Brothers & Sisters’ gospel version accompanies the end credits of The Final Year documentary as we watch the stunned UN ambassador Samantha Power unpinning her son’s drawings... Read more... |
Trump: An American Dream/Angry, White and American, Channel 4 review - a timely look at Trump and the causes of TrumpFriday, 10 November 2017
There are, as I’m sure many of you are aware, four key stages of political change. Denial, anger, acceptance and, finally, documentary film-making. Now that the Donald has been ensconced in the White House for over a year, Channel 4’s, Trump: An... Read more... |
