America
ellin.stein
If Errol Morris lived in Middle Earth he’d make a documentary about Sauron. If he taught at Hogwarts, he’d be turning his cameras on Voldemort. You get the idea. Morris is drawn to Dark Overlords, powerful men of steely ambition and ego, convinced of their own rightness even after events have proven that their wrong-headed ideas have demonstrably contributed to the sum of human misery.He can also claim to be the only person to have made documentaries about not one but two former U.S. Defense Secretaries (Ministers), the pinnacle of the Pentagon. The first was 2003’s Oscar-winning The Fog of Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Liars are well known for trying different musical styles. In times past, we’ve had the punk funk of 2010’s "Proud Evolution", the industrial noise of 2007’s “Dear God”, 2006’s freak folk “The Other Side of Mt Heart Attack” and the psychedelic garage rock of 2008’s “Freak Out”, to name a few. On their last album, 2012’s WIXIW, Liars tentatively dipped their collective toe into the world of electronica. Mess sees the band expand on this by giving their keyboards a good kicking, dropping their guitars and coming out with some seriously dark electronic sounds, reminiscent of Black Strobe’s Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Like his father Ivan (Ghostbusters) Jason Reitman has shown himself to be a sure hand at helming comedy, and his less commercial sensibility has resulted in films as spiky and interesting as Young Adult, Juno, Up in the Air and Thank You For Smoking. With his fifth feature - staring Kate Winslet and Josh Brolin - Reitman Junior tries something different, something initially more dramatic, but ends up back in comic territory anyway, albeit unintentionally.Set in 1987 during the titular US holiday weekend and narrated by Tobey Maguire (who seems to do this a lot - see also The Ice Storm, Read more ...
David Nice
A voyage around Beethoven by Ives and John Adams, and then beyond him by Berlioz, added up to a vintage San Francisco Symphony programme from its music director Michael Tilson Thomas. Forty years on from his first concert with SFS, he’s still youthful in demeanour, still flapping with seagull (or albatross) like flamboyancy. But is there a chill behind the showmanship? I ended up feeling that way despite what should have been the ultimate cataclysm of the Frenchman’s concluding infernal orgy.The sound of the orchestra is still sleek and bright. That paid dividends in a Bruckner concert I Read more ...
aleks.sierz
This venue continues its promotion of American drama with another prize-winning play from across the pond. Hot on the heels of Gina Gionfriddo’s Rapture, Blister, Burn, with its casting of Emila Fox, comes this play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his critically acclaimed Rabbit Hole, which also earned several Tony Award nominations and a film adaptation with Nicole Kidman. For Good People, Hampstead has tempted national treasure and Olivier Award-winning actress Imelda Staunton to play the lead.This is that rare thing — an American play about classHer character Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
“Follow the instructions."David Lean’s suggestion to a costume designer shows the importance of the script – a film’s “recipe”. This is why the Oscar categories for Best Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay are so important: without great bones, we'd have nothing good to watch.In the second part of our Oscars preview, here are our predictions and picks for the screenplay gongs, alongside our look at the scene-stealers in the supporting acting categories.ADAPTED SCREENPLAYIn the Adapted Screenplay category, the leading nominee is, as expected, John Ridley’s superb script for 12 Years a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
You could boil down the content of this new HBO import to an info-bite that reads "two detectives hunt serial killer in Louisiana", but that wouldn't give you the faintest inkling of the pace, mood or texture of what's shaping up as a remarkable chunk of television. You may find it a little slow, and the Deep South accents sometimes cry out for explanatory surtitles, but you're liable to find it seeping into your consciousness like a troubling dream you can't shake off.Unusually for an American show, this eight-part series has been authored solely by its creator, Nic Pizzolatto, and is helmed Read more ...
fisun.guner
The National Gallery recently embarked on a first: they acquired their first American painting. Men of the Docks, 1912, (main picture) may not be George Bellows’ most famous or best-regarded work; nonetheless, it’s a gritty and beautifully observed slice of New York life among the city’s dockside workers.“In this country, we have no need of art as culture,” Bellows’ former tutor, the artist Robert Henri, pronounced. “No need of art for poetry’s sake….What we do need is art that expresses the spirit of the people today.” Bellows absorbed Henri’s lesson and absorbed it well, at least during the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Michael Bloomfield: From his Head to his Heart to his HandsMike Bloomfield was undoubtedly one of rock’s greatest and most distinctive guitarists. He was also wildly erratic and did much to undermine what others saw in him. He died at age 37 in 1981. He had been a drug addict and self-mythologist. The records he left behind were many, and he never landed in one band or place for long. Crucial to Bob Dylan turning his back on the acoustic, he was on stage with him when he went electric at Newport in 1965. His stinging tones helped define “Like a Rolling Stone”. Dylan told Bloomfield not Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
José Padilha’s glossy reimagining of RoboCop is entertaining but mostly forgettable. Geared towards the profitable 12A market, its good looking but illogical action sequences are no replacement for the grimy, grubby and magnificently realised dystopian world from Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 scathing satire.Just like Verhoeven did back in the 1980s, Padilha is making his way into the Hollywood arena thanks to his adept hand at fast paced action sequences, which can be witnessed in his superb Elite Squad films. Unlike in Verhoeven’s version however, the screenplay penned by newcomer Joshua Zetumer Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Since Nashville and country music are one giant soap opera, it's amazing nobody turned Tennessee's Music City into a TV series before. No matter. Here we are with series two, and it's as deliriously cheesy and melodramatic as ever.The first series ended with veteran country star Rayna James (Connie Britton) and her alcoholic guitarist/former lover Deacon Claybourne hurtling into a cataclysmic car crash. Series two opened amid the wreckage and the squeaking of tortured metal, with flashbacks to when Deacon and Rayna were young and in lurve (bravo for a splendid decades-rewinding job by the Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The annual reappearance of The Good Wife is always a cause for celebration. Why they persistently park it in the twilight zone of More4 remains one of the enduring mysteries of our era, since it's one of the best shows on TV, but the only question that need concern us is: will season five be as good as the ones that came before? On the evidence of this opener, yes indeed, so much so that American critics have been hailing it as the best ever,Change is in the air at Chicago's upmarket law firm Lockhart Gardner. Not only does Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) have to be mindful of her new Read more ...