Buzz
igor.toronyilalic
Superficially it's the very picture of innocence. A boy clings to his wooden steed, one hand clutching the neck, the other flying free. Few Fourth Plinth commissions will be more easily co-opted for official public duty. Hope, youth, the exultation of the ordinary: the state will be able to do plenty with this. Already Boris Johnson has tried to make an Olympic mascot of the boy. Joanna Lumley, who unveiled the work earlier today, hoped his gold-plating boded well for the Summer. But as with all the best public art, Elmgreen and Dragset's new sculpture might outwardly bow to its commissioners Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Fascinating news of the errant Royal Ballet star Sergei Polunin, apparently not lost to ballet just yet. Following his sudden walkout from the world-famous company where he was trained and nurtured as the most promising young man for decades, he is returning to Sadler's Wells in a mere three weeks with the independent programme of male ballet put on by his compatriot-in-rebellion Ivan Putrov.The programme, entitled Men in Motion, was hit on its opening in late January by the tsunami of publicity surrounding Polunin and by the less positive effect of the last-minute unavailability of three of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Classical music and sport: should they spend more time together? The idea was posited more than 20 years ago that football and opera made for ideal bedfellows, so long as the football was being played in Italy and the operatic aria was Nessun Dorma, sung by Pavarotti. Since then no major tournament or Olympiad passes by without the BBC making the effort to hoik improving classical sounds into the broadcasting mix.The idea that the emotionalism of sport finds its perfect expression in certain types of music will be put to the test on Friday when the BBC Philharmonic performs a series of tunes Read more ...
Natalie Shaw
It's awards season for the music industry, and no amount of complaining, ignoring or pointedly watching BBC Four in protest is going to stop the BRIT Awards from ordering in a few thousand servings of homemade tomato chutney and crostini to be laid out for the insider guests gathered at the O2 Arena. It's their once-a-year big chance to let their stars try and demonstrate their USPs in their winner's speeches, for starters. However in 2012, it seems that there's all too little that's unique about many of them - in particular their "love" for their fans. If the two-hour broadcast was Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Sudden and disconcerting news from English National Ballet where it's just been announced that artistic director Wayne Eagling is to step down this summer. The company gives no reason for this exceedingly short notice, which leaves them having to advertise the third most significant job in British ballet within the next few days, and a precipitate appointment procedure only weeks after the departure of their managing director.Eagling, 61, a former star of the Royal Ballet, has been ENB director since 2005, and while heading a company of fairly stagnant and repetitive touring repertoire, has Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
If you don't fancy any more masters-and-servants dramas on a Sunday evening, you can thank Channel 4 for bringing the excellent Homeland to its Sunday roster. Kicking off tonight, it arrives in the UK basking in Golden Globe glory, having picked up accolades for Best Drama Series and Best Actress in a Drama Series in last month's ceremony. The latter went to Claire Danes for her performance as CIA counter-terrorist officer Carrie Mathison.The premise of Homeland is that US Marine Sergeant Nick Brody (Damian Lewis, also Globe-nominated) has been freed from eight years in Al Qaeda captivity in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Further advancing the theory that television is the place for pedigree actors to be seen nowadays, Dustin Hoffman makes his TV debut in HBO's Luck, which kicks off on Saturday 18 February on Sky Atlantic. A complex, multi-stranded saga about horse racing and the rich mix of characters who swarm around it, Luck is directed by Michael Mann (of Heat, Miami Vice and Manhunter fame) and written and created by David Milch, whose credits include NYPD Blue and Deadwood.Hoffman, who plays just-out-of-jail crime boss Chester "Ace" Bernstein, recalled how he'd finally been lured to the small screen." Read more ...
Jasper Rees
He played chess with Death in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, was crucified as Jesus in George Stevens’s The Greatest Story Ever Told and diced with the devil in William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. There’s something magnicent and elemental about the life and work of Max Von Sydow. Born in 1929, he has looked like a craggy old monument for at least 30 years.For several decades Von Sydow has been Hollywood’s Nordic figleaf – an emissary from the farthest shores of European arthouse cinema who gives Hollywood integrity and ballast. No one felt that more keenly than Woody Allen, Bergman’s self- Read more ...
Glyn Môn Hughes
The oldest profession is at the heart of one of the most popular operas in the canon. But the price put on a woman's sexuality will not be quite so glamorously portrayed in a new opera as it is in La Traviata. Ensemble 10/10, the contemporary music ensemble of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. will premiere Anya17, a new piece by Adam Gorb based on an arresting, highly disturbing libretto by Ben Kaye.“I’ve worked with Adam on two pieces before and he was presented with an opportunity to write an opera,” explains Kaye. “Adam’s brief to me was to explore the clash of cultures between Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
A Valentine’s card to the Earth donated by artists might seem a bit schlocky, even if cynicism is not the appropriate emotion on Valentine's Day. This is, however, no woolly-headed stunt, but part of dynamic lawyer Polly Higgins’s serious and - who knows - possibly achievable campaign to raise the profile of her efforts to turn “ecocide” into a recognised crime, one with which individuals and corporations can be prosecuted.The campaign is getting some traction, Higgins having recently met with the likes of Evo Morales in Bolivia and ex-President Clinton in the United States. She is at the Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
What could be more romantic than watching and listening to singers born on Valentine's Day rhapsodising about L.O.V.E.? We have love songs on video from Russia, Japan, Tunisia, America and the Czech Republic. Or if not love exactly, then how about saxist Maceo Parker (born 14 February 1943), best known for his work with James Brown, simply "needing somebody to make it funky with right now"? Take it away, Mr Parker... 14 February 1961: Pop music star Latifa Arfaoui was born in Manouba, in Tunisia. Her biography on her website states that she was "born into a small white house like all Read more ...
joe.muggs
Well, who could have predicted that? For once the Grammys proved that the US recording industry establishment is up for the challenge of reflecting the sense of a world in social and cultural flux by throwing surprise after surprise, bombshell after bombshell, at its shocked audience. It was a night of victory for the underdogs and the radicals, a sense of musical revolution in the air, with all bets off. OK, no, of course it wasn't. But we can dream, right? Because we're going to need those dreams if the endless succession of safe bets and pats on the back for big sales is anything to go by Read more ...