Venice
Death in Venice, Opera NorthSaturday, 26 October 2013
From the strange, stuttering opening to its elegiac, drawn-out coda, this is an exquisite, lovingly realised staging of Britten's last opera. It's so good that it amplifies any doubts that you might have about this peculiar, distinctly unlovable... Read more... |
PietaSaturday, 07 September 2013
We learn from the front titles of Pieta that it’s Kim Ki-duk’s 18th film, and it won the Korean director the Golden Lion award at last year’s Venice film festival, against strong competition. Viewers may be asking themselves a rather different... Read more... |
Death in Venice, English National OperaSunday, 16 June 2013
Austere, beautiful, heartbreaking, streaked with genius - that goes for both Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice and Deborah Warner’s remarkable production of it for ENO, returning all too briefly to the Coliseum, with a superb central... Read more... |
Metamorphosis: Titian 2012, National GalleryThursday, 12 July 2012
Three paintings by Titian depicting stories from Ovid’s poem Metamorphoses welcome you to the National Gallery’s exhibition Metamorphosis: Titian 2012. Diana and Callisto shows Diana casting out the pregnant nymph Callisto from her company. Diana... Read more... |
Sylvie Guillem awarded Venice's Golden LionSunday, 13 May 2012The dancer Sylvie Guillem has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the 8th International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Venice. The ballerina, the longtime superstar of the Royal Ballet after her rise to glory at Nureyev's... Read more... |
Shakespeare in Italy, BBC TwoFriday, 04 May 2012
Francesco da Mosto’s two-parter is ostensibly about the Bard and his fascination with the TV historian’s native Italy. In reality, it’s a film about da Mosto and his apparently God-given, below-the-belt hotness. Given the camera’s ceaseless drooling... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Venice Film Festival: McQueen, Lanthimos, ArnoldSaturday, 10 September 2011
This year’s Venice Film Festival has been awash with great directors from what one might call the old guard: David Cronenberg, Roman Polanski, William Friedkin, Aleksander Sokurov, Philippe Garrel. But when the jury presents its prizes tonight, I... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the 68th Venice Film Festival: Clooney, Polanski, MadonnaFriday, 02 September 2011
I wonder if it’s possible for a film festival to kick off with a bigger bang. For your first three competition films to be directed by one of the world’s biggest movie stars, one of its most celebrated (and controversial) auteurs and arguably the... Read more... |
DVD: Don't Look NowFriday, 24 June 2011
Is Don’t Look Now really the best British film of all time? That’s how a panel of 150 industry experts voted earlier this year in a poll compiled by Time Out. But then, out of a list of 100 top British movies, Distant Voices, Still Lives came third... Read more... |
Interview: Film Director Nicolas RoegThursday, 23 June 2011
There is something rather bloody-minded and heroic about Nicolas Roeg’s films with their fractured narratives, macabre imagery and extremes of sex and violence which place him, along with film-makers such as Ken Russell and Roger Corman, within a... Read more... |
Betrayal, Comedy TheatreFriday, 17 June 2011
This is a play that begins after the end of an affair, and threads its precise, forensic way back to the very beginning of it. As the lovers are awkwardly reunited after two years, the theme of deceit as a web of competing and ambiguous claims is... Read more... |
Mike Nelson to represent Britain at the Venice BiennaleTuesday, 03 May 2011
Mostly the Venice Biennale passes me by entirely: ho-hum, another tired bit of Brit Art, I think, and turn the page. But Mike Nelson, twice nominated for the Turner Prize, is a terrific artist, too little seen, too odd, too unsettling to have... Read more... |
