America
emma.simmonds
The exquisitely eclectic David O. Russell is fast becoming the go-to director for Oscar hungry actors. His last two films, 2010's The Fighter and 2012's Silver Linings Playbook, garnered their respective casts an astonishing seven Academy Awards nominations between them, including three wins. His latest, American Hustle, combines key cast members from those two films, creating an awards monolith (the New York Film Critics Circle would agree - they named it Best Picture earlier this month). But if the cast might make it seem impossibly worthy, the best thing about American Hustle is that it's Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s ironic that the album which has invited itself back onto the turntable more often than any other this year is wholly redolent of another time and place: the California of the early Seventies. Whatever the shortcomings of his live performance, on his second album Fanfare Jonathan Wilson fashioned a dense, atmospheric whole whose constituent ingredients were explicitly acknowledged – and not just by the identity of those guesting on the album. But it was also wholly original and showcased a unique yet disconcertingly familiar voice. And it revealed more and more depth with repeated visits Read more ...
Lisa-Marie Ferla
This year, even legendary punk rockers Bad Religion released a Christmas-themed album - as if to underline that, for just about any recording artist, it’s not a matter of "if" but of "when". Christmas Songs only shares one track with Kelly Clarkson’s Wrapped in Red - two if you’re counting the bonus tracks - but I can imagine them nestled comfortably together in some completist’s iTunes folder, alongside every other version of “White Christmas” committed to tape.With a Greatest Hits collection now under her belt, it’s probably as good a time as any for the American Idol-winning Texan to Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The cumulative effect of the BBC's Cold War season hasn't been to remind us that truth is stranger than fiction so much as to demonstrate how they swirled together into a miasma of delusion and uncertainty. We've seen Reds under the bed and spies in the ointment and revisited once again notorious episodes of the highest treason.In BBC Two's Cold War, Hot Jets, we were shown not only how Britain suicidally sold its cutting-edge jet engine technology to the Russians, but how the crews of the RAF's nuclear-equipped V-bombers were trained to fly their final, cataclysmic missions beyond the Iron Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Allen Ginsberg was once approached by two young acolytes eager to discuss literature. The bearded eminence of the Beats was the soul of generosity, giving up no small allowance of time to share his vast knowledge and experience. How they must have basked in the glow as a great poet treated them as equals. At a certain point, having put in sufficient effort, Ginsberg deemed it a good moment to change the subject. “So,” he said, “either of you guys suck cock?”It’s the making of this adventurer which is considered in Kill Your Darlings, and he’s played by the ever questing Daniel Radcliffe. Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Alexander Payne is at home with the road movie. From mid-life crisis in Californian wine country in Sideways to dealing with life after the death of a loved one in About Schmidt, he has a knack of tapping into the human spirit and an affinity with the American landscape. Taking great lengths to elicit the whirs and hums of vehicles and the many bumps along the open road, his exploration of the USA is always an eye-opening experience. Nebraska is no different and is the setting for a Midwestern adventure which captures the essence of an agricultural town, the antics of an elderly community and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“Long may it stay a mystery,” said Keith Richards, the first talking head seen in this opening shot of a two-part excursion through blues music. Self-evidently, two hours devoted to this oft-explored subject wasn’t going to leave too many mysteries. Woke Up This Morning did tread new ground though – at least for British television – by recalibrating perceptions of authenticity and motivation.Big Bill Broonzy had made his name in Chicago, where he was seen as a sophisticated and urban performer. For his 1938 New York debut, he allowed himself to be portrayed as fresh from an Arkansas farm. The Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Classic children’s stories often have a darker side; a shadowy area that lends an eternal quality to an otherwise merely durable yarn. Such is Mary Poppins. How and why it came to the big screen is one of Hollywood’s best tales, previously untold until now with Saving Mr Banks, a controlled yet poignant story hinging on the persistence and pain essential to bringing even the cheeriest film to fruition.Blind Side director John Lee Hancock’s high-profile effort focuses on the psychological backstory of one of the most famous children’s stories of all. It is a big mission – even if few will know Read more ...
edward.seckerson
In the season of goodwill a new musical based on Bret Easton Ellis’ notorious novel American Psycho might earn itself the subtitle “NOT the Christmas Show” - but when the composer is Duncan Sheik, he of the sensational Spring Awakening, and the director Rupert Goold, fresh into his artistic stewardship of the Almeida Theatre, all bets are off. There’s even a number entitled “Mistletoe Alert” - so the season of rampant consumerism might well prove just the time to launch one of the most anticipated musicals of this or any season.In this audio podcast Sheik and Goold tell how the bloodiest show Read more ...
Angie Errigo
The Hunger Games franchise is blessed with Jennifer Lawrence as its heroically defiant protagonist Katniss Everdeen. No matter how much darker, more drastic and deranged developments get in the world of these Games, Lawrence is a touching, authentic and watchable focus for our sympathetic attention.This second instalment — in what will be four films from the phenomenally popular Suzanne Collins book trilogy — finds Katniss, haunted by the ordeal of her inspirational victory in the 74th Hunger Games, back in dystopian, post-Apocalyptic Panem’s miserable mining community District 12 with her Read more ...
Katherine McLaughlin
Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital is the place where both JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald died and it serves as the central setting for the most recent film to investigate the assassination of the 35th President. Former journalist Peter Landesman directs and approaches this much pored-over incident with a fresh perspective by putting the doctor who operated on the President, the man who filmed the footage of the assassination, the brother of Lee Harvey Oswald and the special agent in charge of security under the microscope.Based on Vincent Bugliosi’s book Four Days in November, shot in just twenty Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Hailed in some quarters as a wily and satirical retro-classic, Andrew Bujalski's Computer Chess depends for its survival on threading its way through the eye of a tiny nostalgic needle. Bujalski's intention was to create a kind of hommage to the single-minded, possibly autistic computing pioneers of the early Eighties, often unsightly weirdos with hilarious hair and no clothes sense who nonetheless "saw this mountain and insisted on climbing it," as Bujalski puts it.After barely managing to sit through the first 10 minutes, in which creators of rival computer chess programs at a weekend Read more ...