America
Kieron Tyler
Frank Sinatra might have come to dislike being branded as part of the Rat Pack, but the phrase stuck and still sticks. Judging by last night’s Christmas-slanted show, just as he, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr live forever, so will that phrase. Eleven years on from the first Rat Pack Live From Las Vegas show the shine hasn’t gone and the trio – even though they aren’t really there – light up the Wyndham’s Theatre.Strolling on to open the show with “Come Fly With Me”, Stephen Triffitt is Frank Sinatra. He’s been at it for over 10 years and ought to be good, but if you’re a first-timer little Read more ...
Nick Broomfield
I didn’t really know that much about Sarah Palin. I remember being kind of blown away when she got up on that stage with all those kids and gave that rather brilliant speech which seemed to be an enormous breath of a fresh air for the Republican Party. This film was done before the Tucson shootings. I don’t think she’s revealed just how horrible she could really be. To that extent I think I had a fairly open mind. I was aware of her contempt for education and established politicians but I had enough curiosity to give her the benefit of the doubt. I knew nothing about evangelical religion.When Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Readers in America might be perplexed. Stateside, A Christmas Carole hits the streets as A Holiday Carole. Play spot the difference by comparing the images above and below. It’s not the only disconnect on offer. King is Jewish, so a Christmas-themed album seems offbeat – especially as it features “Chanukah Prayer”. Then there’s the minor matter that one of pop’s greatest songwriters doesn’t contribute any songs to the album.It’s been 10 years since King's last album, Love Makes the World, and once the brow furrowing is over, A Christmas Carole deserves little further thought beyond Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In JJ Abrams’s retro sci-fi Super 8, a group of budding film-makers are terrorised by a mysterious creature. With credible camaraderie and poignant performances from its young leads, it’s as much about growing up and the thrill of first-time film-making as it is a dalliance with the fantastical.It’s 1979 in the small American town of Lillian, and Joe Lamb (saucer-eyed newcomer Joel Courtney) has just lost his mother in an industrial accident. Neglected by a father struggling to cope with his own grief, Joe escapes by helping with his friend’s zombie film and, in the process, he falls for Read more ...
theartsdesk
Over the year we have reviewed many a new film and television drama in theartsdesk's Disc of the Day slot. As our series of DVD recommendations comes round to the movies, we have chosen to concentrate not on individual titles but box sets. For completists we suggest everything from Harry Potter to Ken Loach, The Avengers to Tarkovsky. If you want more Chaplin or Eisenstein in your life, here, too, is a good place to start. These collections and collations are a worthwhile investment for serious and playful fans of film and drama alike. The great thing about a box set - be it three discs of Read more ...
Russ Coffey
When theartsdesk last saw folkie Swedish sister act First Aid Kit, they were both still teenagers. It was a dank February night and they beguiled a tough Edinburgh club with voices that sounded like they belonged somewhere in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But that was almost two years ago, a long time in the life of one teenage girl, let alone two. That evening, our reviewer wrote, “Hope filled the air, like the scent of freshly cut grass.” Last night, as I stood backstage waiting for a pre-show chat with the girls, I worried that after months on the road some of that artless charm may have Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Without Hubert Sumlin there would have been no Yardbirds, Captain Beefheart, Led Zeppelin, T-Rex or White Stripes. He was also an essential ingredient for The Rolling Stones. As Howlin’ Wolf’s guitarist, his straightforward power was the perfect foil to Wolf’s guttural vocal roar. The combination of Sumlin’s razor-wire distortion and bouncy riffing was irresistible and prefigured – influenced – the hard rock which evolved in the late Sixties. It also gave Marc Bolan his electric guitar style when Tyrannosaurus Rex became T-Rex.The songs Sumlin played on became classics and were influential. Read more ...
Veronica Lee
There are times when one marvels that some films ever get the green light; whether it's difficult subject matter, unknown leads or first-time directors, they each have their own, different hurdles to cross with studios more interested in the bottom line than creating art. But with a film such as The Big Year, one wonders that it ever got made for different reasons - for despite its A-list stars, a director with a successful track record and an unusual (maybe even unique) storyline, it really is one that should never have got beyond the conference-call stage.It tells the story of three Read more ...
Russ Coffey
For a couple of uber-hip rock nerds, The Black Keys do often still make pretty conventional music. After flirting with hip hop on the Blakroc project (and some of that mentality rubbing off on 2010’s release, Brothers), it’s back to straightforward, if sophisticated, blues-rock for the Ohio-based duo. But if there’s not much that's groundbreaking or experimental here, it’s all pretty likeable stuff: the sort of material that gives unchallenging listening a good name.By resting the Seventies guitarscape over rhythms that are more Fifties and Sixties in tone, Auerbach and Carney have given El Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s not long until we’re told, “There is enough money in the world to make everyone in the world a millionaire.” And if everyone was? Utopia and freedom might not be inevitable. Inexorable price rises would restore some sort of balance. Or a crash might follow. But as this extraordinary look into what’s been inspired by the American money motivators who’ve washed up on our shores showed: logic, be damned.The king and queen of money motivators are Robert T and Kim Kiyosaki. They met in a TGI Friday’s when he got an eyeful of her now-bejeaned legs. After they hooked up, he went on to write Read more ...
Jasper Rees
New York, late August 2010I am at the opening of a swanky new gallery. Around me, the latest daubs by the hottest names adorn the walls of room after room. It’s worth mentioning a couple of discrepancies from your regular opening. This is a canapé-free environment, for one. There is no chilled white wine, no pretentious appraisal of carefully lit works. Nobody has come dressed to thrill. In fact, nobody has come at all. Apart from me.As it happens, I am the only person who will ever be invited to view the complete collection, and it’s not as if I’m even a guest. I am here as an independent Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
One of the great revelations of the decade-long HBO TV invasion is that so many of their series take everything at a truly leisurely pace. Their groundbreaking MO is not to rush, as pre-millennial TV shows usually did, but to give the plot space to breathe in a way that matches how we now watch TV - at our own pace, in our own time. In the case of Mildred Pierce, film director Todd Haynes’s beautiful-looking, Emmy-winning five-episode adaptation of the 1941 James M Cain novel, this sometimes backfires. The narrative has almost too much space to spread out, with five and a half hours viewing Read more ...