America
Eureka Day, Old Vic review - fun if not entirely fulfillingMonday, 26 September 2022
Can a play peak too soon? That's the quandary that attends the Old Vic airing of Eureka Day, Jonathan Spector's on-point if overextended comedy that was written prior to the pandemic but has absolutely come into its own just now. A skewering of... Read more... |
Blonde review - Marilyn Monroe thrown to the wolvesFriday, 30 September 2022
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is an atrocity – a ghoulish biopic of Marilyn Monroe that luxuriates in her maltreatment and misery, culminating in protracted images of the star’s lonely death from barbiturate pills distractedly swallowed like candies and... Read more... |
Sidney review - documentary portrait of Hollywood's first black superstarFriday, 23 September 2022
When Sidney Poitier died in January at the age of 94, the obituaries were warm and respectful to the pioneering black movie star. Now comes Oprah Winfrey’s nearly two-hour tribute, complete with famous interviewees, some great movie clips, and... Read more... |
Winslow Homer: Force of Nature, National Gallery review - dump the symbolism and enjoy the dramaTuesday, 20 September 2022
Across the pond Winslow Homer is a household name; in his day, he was regarded as the greatest living American painter. He was renowned especially for his seascapes and his most famous painting, The Gulf Stream, 1899/1906 (main picture) features in... Read more... |
Bright Half Life, Kings Head Theatre review - ups and downs of a tender lesbian love affairMonday, 19 September 2022
A tender love story has arrived at the Kings Head theatre from the US, where its author, Tanya Barfield, is an award-winning playwright for both television and theatre. The plot is simple: two women — one white, one Black — meet in an office where... Read more... |
Funny Pages review - comic-book confidentialSaturday, 17 September 2022
Shortly after the art teacher who thinks he’s a genius jumps on a table naked to be sketched, only to meet a sticky end, high school senior Robert (Daniel Zolghadri) sets out to start his brilliant career as an underground cartoonist.From this... Read more... |
Album: The Afghan Whigs - How Do You Burn?Saturday, 03 September 2022
Hedonism and romance still drive Greg Dulli’s rock’n’roll on his main band’s ninth album.Relationship traumas have always simmered just beneath the Whigs’ surface, most notably on Gentlemen’s 1993 autopsy of an affair. Whatever the real life... Read more... |
Batiashvili, Philadelphia Orchestra, Nézet-Séguin, Edinburgh International Festival 2022 review - classy playing, mismatched programmeMonday, 29 August 2022
For the penultimate concert in the Philadelphia Orchestra’s residency at the Edinburgh Festival, the chosen repertoire was evidently considered so obscure that the box office managers didn’t even try to sell any tickets in the Usher Hall’s cavernous... Read more... |
Queen of Glory review - carving an identity between two worldsFriday, 26 August 2022
Queen of Glory is a passion project, nurtured for almost 10 years as a script by Nana Mensah, who ended up not only directing the film but taking the lead role as well in order to get it made.It’s the story of Sarah Obeng, an ambitious second-... Read more... |
Better Call Saul, Season 6 Finale, Netflix review - end of the line for TV's most celebrated con artistFriday, 19 August 2022
It was the end of an era, as Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s bittersweet epic of the brilliantly devious Saul Goodman wound to a close. Hints of redemption were in the air, signalled by Saul reverting at last to his real name, James McGill. A... Read more... |
Album: Cass McCombs - HeartmindSaturday, 13 August 2022
Cass McCombs has something of the detailed, opaque depth of his late peer Jason Molina, with more taste for pop shapes under a broader musical canvas, while still in the Americana underground. The Dead’s Bob Weir, Blake Mills, Tinariwen, Noam... Read more... |
Where the Crawdads Sing review - picturesque film glosses over its darker themesMonday, 25 July 2022
Derived from Delia Owens’s massively successful novel, Where the Crawdads Sing is the story of Kya Clark, a girl from an abusive, broken home in the North Carolina marshlands who raises herself almost single-handedly. The few people she encounters... Read more... |
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