childhood
Katie Colombus
The idea of a heavy metal rock band for children might be somewhat lacking in appeal for some. Images of leather and chains, frightening make-up, Anthrax-style roaring into a microphone and satanic lyrics for dear little Jonti, all a bit overwhelming. But in Finland, where hard rock is a way of life, of course there’s a heavy metal group for kids.Obsessed as we are by the culture of Nordic cool, Imagination Festival on the Southbank has pushed the boundaries of British sensibility, and here we are. Any fears melt away as five dinosaurs bound onto the stage, like friendly-faced cartoon Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
There’s a nice pairing to these two character-led documentary films, as reflections on concepts of partnership presented from different ends of the spectrum of innocence and experience. Treating innocence, Someday My Prince Will Come (2005) is the story of 11-year-old Laura-Anne, growing up in an isolated village on the Cumbrian coast, as she begins to engage with the boys around her.There’s an almost conscious naivety, as well as plenty of humour in its observation of childhood, as the director follows his subjects over the course of a year in the deprived community in which they live, its “ Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Unimaginable tragedy is given poignant, piquant form in Us/Them. The hour-long performance piece from Belgian theatre company BRONKS has arrived at the National after a much-acclaimed Edinburgh Festival premiere last year. In its intricate weave of frontline semi-reportage and slyly subversive comedy, Dutch-born writer-director Carly Wijs allows a sense of play to inform at every turn this highly physical account of the Beslan school siege in September, 2004. The terrorist act propelled a little-known town in the Russian Caucasus into grievous front-page news. The conceit here is that Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
The homecoming narrative is one of the most elemental ones we know, playing on the most primal human emotions. Stories of separation and reunion have been handed down from time immemorial, varying in their specifics but dominated by their intricate connection to feelings of origin and identity. Lion may be inextricably linked to the details of contemporary life in one sense, but its final scenes have a power that goes far beyond it. In director Garth Davis’s hands the story is told with a sensitivity that avoids the lure of sensationalism.Adapted from Saroo Brierley’s memoir A Long Way Home, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Richard Adams, who has died at the age of 96, was the high priest of anthropomorphism. Much his most famous and loved novel is his first, Watership Down, published when he was in his early 50s and so instantly successful that he was able to give up his career in the Department of the Environment to write full time. Hazel, Fiver and Bigwig, the floppy-eared freedom-fighting heroes of Watership Down, kept him in comfort for the rest of his life.The genesis of Watership Down is now almost as familiar a fable as the novel itself. In the late 1960s a career civil servant began entertaining two Read more ...
graham.rickson
Bach: Christmas Oratorio Dunedin Consort/John Butt (Linn)This set makes a brilliant counterpoint to last week’s modern instrument Sony recording, an earthier, differently flavoured set from one of the UK’s best period ensembles. John Butt uses just two singers for each vocal part, each pair swapping solo duties for the different cantatas which make up the oratorio. The Dunedin Consort’s playing is full of character: horns and trumpets are stretched to the limit but acquit themselves handsomely, and there’s some nifty bassoon work from the superb Peter Whelan. And who needs modern oboes when Read more ...
Barney Harsent
For those of you who aren’t parents, or a member of theartsdesk’s burgeoning under-5 readership, Mr Tumble is the comic creation of Justin Fletcher a children’s entertainer and TV presenter. Among his CV highlights is providing the voice of Jake, one of the the Noughties, pre-school phenomenon the Tweenies, and a character who made Joe Pasquale sound like Richard Burton after a packet of woodbines and half a bottle of decent Scotch.I’m not joking, compared to that voice, nails down a blackboard seems like a decent option for guided meditation, so I’m genuinely terrified going into this. I’m Read more ...
Heather Neill
The cry "Let's pretend" must have been heard often when J M Barrie played with the Llewelyn Davies boys in Kensington Gardens or at Black Lake Cottage in Surrey. The five sons of Arthur and Sylvia, orphaned as children and adopted by Barrie, almost all had tragic lives: George died in Flanders in 1915, Michael drowned at Oxford, Peter later committed suicide. But during childhood they escaped into piratical adventures and an invented Neverland with "Uncle Jim".It is inevitable that Barrie's own strange childhood story should be scrutinised alongside his possessive interest in the Llewelyn Read more ...
mark.kidel
First-person documentary must steer the uneasy path between embarrassing confessional, narcissistic self-obsession and work that will resonate beyond the merely parochial context of home movies. The dangers surrounding the genre are of course one of the sources of its potential strength. The intimacy that near-absolute subjectivity affords is a plus. And so is the thrill of perhaps getting a glimpse behind the personae of everyday life.The New Man chronicles close to a year in the life of film maker Josh Appignanesi and his wife, the writer and academic Devorah Baum. They are supposedly co- Read more ...
Saskia Baron
Tim Burton’s fans always want him to hit the sweet spot again, to give them another Beetlejuice or Edward Scissorhands. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is not quite there, but it’s not for lack of trying. The weakness lies in Jane Goldman’s script, adapted from the eponymous YA novel. There is way too much exposition – characters explain the plot to each other, not just at the outset, but throughout the movie. Leaden dialogue sucks the joy out of some outstanding fantasy sequences and an excellent cast – including Samuel L Jackson as chief baddie Mr Barron, hamming it up in Read more ...
Saskia Baron
If one was going to write the recipe for a classic British children’s film, it would probably include the following: adapt much-loved novel; hire fresh-faced young actors and well-worn comedians; budget for steam trains chugging over viaducts; ensure messing around in boats; add lashings of pop and sprinkle with a faint whiff of jeopardy. Swallows and Amazons has all of the above, and watching it is a bit like being transported back in time, not just to the 1930s when the story is set, but to a childhood Sunday evening when settling down to watch a BBC serial was a bittersweet pleasure, Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Harry Potter lives to see another day. The Hogwarts wizard has made his stage debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part play that pushes JK Rowling’s world-beating franchise beyond the realm of fiction and film to embrace live action: the bespectacled boy has become an angsty grown-up, and London theatre is much the richer for it.But are these characters really three-dimensional? The answer is a resounding yes, if a moist-eyed audience following Sunday’s final curtain is any gauge. Indeed, the resounding irony across the marathon of more than five hours is that a production so Read more ...