America
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: I am the Center – Private Issue New Age Music in America, 1950–1990A landmark reissue either retells a familiar story in a new way or tells an unfamiliar story in a way that fascinates. In both cases, the annotation, packaging, sequencing and track list has to be exemplary. I am the Center succeeds on all counts.This beguiling, extraordinary, perception-altering two-CD set (also available as three albums) is the first widely available collection to assess and reassess the music which accompanied America’s espousal of a fresh form of spiritualty in the aftermath of the Read more ...
theartsdesk
On 22 November 1963 President John F Kennedy was shot, yoking his name to an ex-marine and sometime defector to the USSR called Lee Harvey Oswald. Everyone old enough to remember is said to know where they were when they heard. As America dealt with its trauma, the conspiracy theories started,and spawned well over 1,000 books. The assassination also became the focus for artists in all art forms - in literature, theatre, film and even music. The latest is the movie Parkland, out this week, which reconstructs events in Dallas while steering clear of the main event. Meanwhile the Finborough Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
As a movie it’s a little too neat and a little too worthy but as a benchmark The Butler is a triumph with a strong cast. Director Lee Daniels doesn’t get arty with this story of racial divide and American unrest. Roughly based on the real-life story of Eugene Allen, Daniels' approach is straightforward and highly emotive. There’s plenty for the crowd here, and, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon, the fact that The Butler is accessible across almost every demographic will get its message through to those who need to see it - those who maybe wouldn't see it if it were, say, art house. In some Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The Dracula story has seen almost infinite permutations, though none of them ever manages to improve on Bram Stoker's still-haunting original. This new Anglo-American production keeps Stoker's late 19th-century setting, but has transformed the befanged Count into a kind of supernatural corporate raider stalking the sneering, avaricious fatcats of the City of London. Played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Dracula (***) still retains his familiar Transylvanian roots. Professor Van Helsing, on the other hand, has made a dramatic switch to the dark side and is now the Count's ally and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The team behind The East also created 2011’s stunning Sound of my Voice, which scrutinised an enigmatic cult with a charismatic leader. It was going to be tough act to follow. The East has many of the same elements: a secretive cult with a charismatic leader on a mission; co-writer Brit Marling in a lead role and weird, unexplained semi-ritualistic behaviour. Unfortunately, The East is a halfway house of compromises, tropes and characters following well-worn emotional arcs. Unlike Sound of my Voice, the film does not surrender itself to the world it depicts.Marling plays Jane, an employee of Read more ...
Matt Wolf
What happens when a citizenry marginalised by society and weakened by an illness that could well be fatal are also called upon to rise up to demand the treatment, not to mention the civility and compassion, that are their due? The answer is on often grievous yet ultimately heartening view in How To Survive A Plague, David France's immensely stirring chronicle of the activism - spawned in New York and then spun out elsewhere - that accompanied the first decade or more of the AIDS crisis. Nominated this year for an Oscar, journalist France's thoroughgoing record of events at first stirs Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Many bands would pack it in after the departure of their lead singer, especially if he was their main songwriter. In Midlake’s case, the damage was compounded by Tim Smith leaving after work had begun on the band’s fourth album. Antiphon is what it became, and it’s not what had been started with Smith. One track aside, they began afresh with guitarist Eric Pulido stepping up to fill the gap.Nonetheless, Antiphon is recognisably a Midlake album, albeit one more languorous and soft-focus than ever before. The traces of folk, Americana and Neil Young which surfaced from time to time have largely Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
A film of contrasts, Short Term 12 manages to be simultaneously dark and humorous, casual yet intense. The relationships between staff and patients in the group home for troubled teenagers where it’s set – the facility is meant to be a place of refuge for up to a year, hence the title, though many stay longer – are both thick and thin, and as in the wedding vow must endure through difficult times. They’re thick because the bonds created when exploring the reservoirs of sadness that these kids bring along with them run so deep; thin, because the slightest alteration in mood risks disrupting Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Directed by a Frenchmen, Foxfire adapts an American book to create a film with an archetypical stance and setting which could rank it alongside The Outsiders, Stand by Me or even Rebel Without a Cause. The problem is that despite depicting a passionate, wayward and issue-fuelled gang, Foxfire is not animated enough. It unfolds in deliberate steps, like a stage play. The young women may be on fire, but the measured approach of the overlong film tempers their spirit.Foxfire - Confessions of a Girl Gang is Laurent Cantet’s rendering of the Joyce Carol Oates novel of the same name. It’s been Read more ...
David Nice
Anyone who saw or attended this year’s Last Night of the Proms will know that Marin Alsop is a born communicator with a wry sense of humour. Another of those youthful crowds The Rest is Noise festival keeps attracting gave her a hero’s welcome last night, and she responded with easy compering. As a conductor she’s good, with clear, strong gestures plus a bit of shoulder acting – though if we have to talk top women interpreters, as opposed to animateurs, in the profession, my money’s still on Finn Susanna Mälkki - and she has a good orchestra at her disposal, too, the Brazilian first team of Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
“We grew up like animals,” says FAME Studios’ founder Rick Hall of his upbringing. “That made me better… I wanted to be somebody.” He did become somebody, and in the process put Alabama’s Muscle Shoals on the map. This film tells the story of how a small city birthed some of the greatest American music of the 20th century, and of the ripples which subsequently spread. The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1969. Five years earlier they had released their version of Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On”. Hall was behind the original, his first production.Tucked just inside the north-west Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
James Gandolfini stars as an overweight charmer in the best romantic comedy of the year, written and directed by Nicole Holofcener (Friends With Money). As Albert, Gandolfini – it's one of his last roles, in a film dedicated to “Jim” – brings all his warmth and allure to bear on lively divorced masseuse Eva (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).When the two meet at an LA party they’re so adorable that we instantly want them to become a couple. At the same party, however, ominous tones reverberate as Eva also meets the fabulous poet Marianne (Catherine Keener). Not only is Marianne fascinating, she mesmerises Read more ...