violence
R: Hit First, Hit HardestWednesday, 24 August 2011
You must have come across those “happiness quotient” surveys, which judge the relative achievements on the contentment front across a series of countries. The last one I recall gave Denmark the Number One spot, with a remarkable 96 per cent classing... Read more... |
Conan the BarbarianTuesday, 23 August 2011
The Conan yarns are familiar from novels, comics and TV series, but most of all from the early-Eighties Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer. In this new remake, the title role is stretched around the pneumatic... Read more... |
In a Better WorldWednesday, 17 August 2011
It is easy to see why Danish director Susanne Bier’s latest movie would have scooped up all the Foreign Language gongs, made the festival selection lists and generally five-starred it all over the shop. Riffing on the theme of violent conflict as it... Read more... |
Spooks terminatedThursday, 11 August 2011
With theartsdesk readers still reeling from the demise of Italianate sleuthing series Zen, now comes news of the axing of glossy MI5 drama Spooks. The BBC has announced that the show's 10th series, starting next month, will be its last, though it... Read more... |
Violence in the Streets: On making The InterruptersWednesday, 10 August 2011
Twenty-four years ago, I found myself hanging out virtually every day in the Henry Horner Homes, a Chicago housing project on the city's hardscrabble West Side. I had begun to immerse myself in the lives of two young brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoah... Read more... |
Riot music: we should have listened harderTuesday, 09 August 2011
I'm not claiming some major prescience or insight here. I am as guilty as anyone of dipping into the music of the sink estates for a small dose of frisson then returning to art and music that confirm my own worldview. But maybe, just maybe, if we... Read more... |
Sarah's KeyTuesday, 02 August 2011
History rears its harrowing head in Sarah's Key, a sometimes galumphing film that lingers in the mind not least because of the terrible tale it has to tell. Reminding us that the atrocities of the Holocaust weren't any one country's exclusive... Read more... |
First Cut: Double Lesson, Channel 4Friday, 15 July 2011
If I'm being honest, I never saw the charm of Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. Too many quiet disappointments, too much capital-A Acting. They lacked naturalism in presentation and content, whereas Double Lesson, from Channel 4's First Cut series of... Read more... |
Cell 211Thursday, 14 July 2011
A mean, muscular and unflinching display of concentrated brutality and shaved-down storytelling, the Spanish thriller Cell 211 is armed with the furious intensity of its caged environment and a chain of events which cascades like dominos over and... Read more... |
DVD: Animal KingdomMonday, 11 July 2011
David Michôd’s stark, screw-tight debut is, in his own words, a “grand Melbourne crime drama”. Though it presents us with a menagerie of criminality it eschews many of the paradigms of the genre and feels courageous in its elegant, near... Read more... |
SuperMonday, 04 July 2011
If you had a quid for every time a nerdy character in a contemporary comedy made reference to Star Wars, in particular to the gnomic wisdomous utterances of Yoda, you’d be richer. Maybe not as rich as George Lucas. But it happens. It happens a lot.... Read more... |
Hundreds and Thousands, Soho TheatreMonday, 27 June 2011
One of the many strengths of new writing for the stage is that it’s not afraid to go into the darkest and most upsetting places of the human psyche. Whether at the Royal Court or at the Bush or Soho theatres, young playwrights have dived in to... Read more... |
