Reviews
Tom Birchenough
History has been told in many ways on film, but Rithy Panh achieves something new, something unique and unsettling, in The Missing Picture. It’s the story of his native Cambodia, specifically the years from 1975, when the Khmer Rouge occupied the country's capital Pnomh Penh: driven by an ideology (a mixture of Marx and Rousseau, as it's described here) that sought to exterminate individuality in society, they created Democratic Kampuchea, an attempt at a new classless world that tried to do away with everything from the past, and killed a large part of the population in the process. It’s Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In our big-bang globalised environment, Sherlock Holmes is now more like a Marvel Comics superhero than a mere "consulting detective". We take it for granted that his deductive powers can peel open the physical and psychological secrets of a complete stranger within milliseconds, while the scope of his ambitions has advanced from solving quaint Edwardian mysteries to unpicking global conspiracies and phantasmagorical terror threats. The game is afoot, but now it's in fibre optic HD 3D with 7.1 surround sound and added social networking.Happily, Mark Gatiss (who wrote this series three opener Read more ...
Nick Hasted
It took the last 16 years of Nelson Mandela’s life, almost to the day, to bring his autobiography to the screen. South African producer Anant Singh eventually handed Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom to British director Justin Chadwick and screenwriter William Nicholson to make a film for international audiences. The iconic weight of a violent rebel who became a living saint can’t wholly be thrown off in this authorised (though freely made) biopic. It does, though, remind you that Nelson Mandela was very far from Mother Teresa. Rough and earthy struggle preceded his Robben Island refinement into Read more ...
David Benedict
The great Marilyn Horne used to joke that she was going to release an album entitled “Chestnuts for Chest Nuts”. She never did, but that leaves the door wide open for Sonia Prina whose dark, thrillingly low sound marks her out as the real deal, a genuine contralto. But the excitement of Prina in performance isn’t just about her extraordinary skill at using her unusual range. Throughout this frankly dazzling recital of music Handel wrote for the superstar castrato Senesino, she wasn’t merely singing in front of the eight-strong Ensemble Claudiana, she was truly making music with them.Recently Read more ...
David Benedict
“Her most devastating surprise ever.” Thus spake The Guardian, a quote happily slapped across the cover of the first paperback edition of Agatha Christie’s 1967 thriller Endless Night. While I wouldn’t go quite that far – that honour goes to her still startling, genre-busting The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926) – it’s a compelling little chiller. Small wonder that ITV wanted it for their franchise. Just one tiny problem: it’s a crime novel without a detective. Step forward screenwriter Kevin Elyot who, like an invisible mender, has satisfyingly woven Julia McKenzie’s Miss Marple into Christie’ Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Hollywood’s sexism and obsession with youth half-hobble this lunge for the grey dollar. In a cast seemingly assembled by birth certificate more than likely chemistry, 69-year-old Michael Douglas is playboy businessman Billy, whose Vegas stag weekend before marriage to a thirtyish beauty requires the presence of childhood pals Paddy (Robert De Niro, 70), Archie (Morgan Freeman, 76) and Sam (Kevin Kline, 66, pictured below).The four have mixed feelings as they ready their creaking bones for Sin City debauchery, and inevitable life lessons. Bored Kline’s wife sends him off with a condom and her Read more ...
Simon Munk
Like some kind of slow-witted zombie, mainstream games (on console, mainly) have been decapitated, disemboweled and run flat over, but don't quite know it yet.The year that saw the establishing of a new wave of game-specific hardware including home consoles the Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox One should have been a major one for mainstream, big budget games. But most people who play games now do so on phones, tablets or their computer, not dedicated devices. And mainstream games makers seem content to chase after an increasingly narrow demographic of "hardcore" gamers.The "hardcore" are fed on Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Playgoers could be forgiven for thinking that they were seeing double during much of 2013. No sooner had you sat through Ian Rickson's dazzling revival of Old Times once before you returned again to watch its peerless pair of actresses, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lia Williams, swap roles. Similarly, Ben Whishaw had barely shed his Peter Pan-related persona as the male half of John Logan's Peter and Alice before lending his whiplash authority to the revival of Jez Butterworth's Mojo. There were multiple Ghosts, Midsummer Night's Dreams and Macbeths, slices of O'Neill esoterica and Read more ...
David Nice
There were two strong reasons, I reckoned, for struggling to the Wigmore Hall during the interstitial last week of the year. One was an ascetic wish to be harrowed by a mind and soul of winter, both within and without, in Prokofiev’s towering D minor Violin Sonata, after so much Christmas sweetness and light. The other was the memory of Ukrainian-Israeli violinist Vadim Gluzman’s 2008 Tchaikovsky Concerto performance with Neeme Järvi and the London Philharmonic Orchestra – not just a great performance, of which there are plenty every year, but a great partnership, one of half a dozen that Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
They've had Ray Winstone all over Sky this Christmas, gamely plugging this new dramatisation of J Meade Falkner's rumbustious crowd-pleaser, Moonfleet. Ray's theme is that we urgently need more quality drama with broad appeal on TV and shouldn't keep relying on worn-out cliches about drug dealers and murderers. His character in Moonfleet, smuggler and pub landlord Elzevir Block, is from the hard-but-fair school, prepared to fight it out with the men from the Revenue but also capable of unbending loyalty and protective, fatherly feelings towards the orphaned John Trenchard.Winstone is the best Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Despite his nickname and habit of doing a bunk, George “Shadow” Morton was one of America’s highest-profile and most distinctive producers and songwriters. He was responsible for shaping the sound and style of The Shangri-Las, Janis Ian, Vanilla Fudge and The New York Dolls. Until the release of Sophisticated Boom Boom!! – The Shadow Morton Story, the musical side of his story had not been told. A consummate collection, this significant release was pulled off with style. The packaging was superb, as was the annotation. Its music was amazing too.Morton’s vision brought filmic drama to pop. Read more ...
David Nice
Which musical calendar year isn’t laden down with composer commemorations, too often a pretext for lazy and unimaginative planning? The last 12 months, with Verdi, Wagner and Britten as the birthday boys (in case you failed to hear), have raised the stakes.It looked on paper as if the BBC Proms were going for the obvious: all the major Wagner operas except The Flying Dutchman and The Mastersingers in semi-staged versions.The execution exceeded everyone’s wildest hopes (there, I’ve snuck in a collective top choice already). Now, it seems, is the time when opera is becoming the designer’s Read more ...