awards
Jasper Rees
It’s an accepted flouting of reality that in films “based on a true story”, the first betrayal of the truth is in the casting. The reveal over the closing credits of The Fighter tells you just how well its two main characters have done out of Hollywood. For the preceding two hours these rough-edged veterans of the boxing ring have morphed into Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale. Whatever else is a riff on reality in this thrilling addition to the canon of fight movies is mostly a matter for the extras. But to recreate the bruising lives of a struggling boxer and his smack-addicted half- Read more ...
stephen.walsh
The Cardiff Singer of the World may or may not be (as several of this year’s competitors seemed to think) the most important voice competition in the universe, but it must surely be the nicest. The Welsh really do believe, perhaps rightly, that they invented singing; and to hear the whole St David’s Hall uplifted in “Land of My Fathers” at the end of Sunday’s final was a heartwarming experience – almost as much as to see the four losing finalists applauding the winner, the Moldovan soprano Valentina Naforniţă, as if they were honestly pleased she’d won, though at least two of them must have Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Broadway musicals can have a bumpy transatlantic crossing. For every New York entry that repeats its acclaim on the West End, others quickly fade, while still others never make it to the capital at all: consider The Light in the Piazza, which won six Tonys in 2005 but hasn't yet been seen in the UK south of Leicester. What, then, of Shrek, DreamWorks's entry into the Broadway musical sweepstakes that called it quits in New York after little more than a year? It's way too early to tell whether London will prove the show's salvation, but at least it boasts two Nigels who between them are not to Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Broadway may not be “just for gays any more”, as the event's unstoppably charming and funny compere Neil Patrick Harris noted in his song-and-dance opening to the 2011 Tony Awards, held last night in New York to honour that city's theatre season just gone. But it’s still very much about the Brits: some habits never die.The truism was borne out yet again at a ceremony that saw Mark Rylance pick up an additional Tony and the National Theatre’s War Horse win in every category (five) in which it was nominated, including Best Play and Best Director for Marianne Elliott and Tom Morris. For Read more ...
Jasper Rees
A tall and exceptionally striking Valkyrie of a blonde, Alison Balsom (b 1978) is the polar antithesis of a hard-drinking, slightly tubby, very male trumpeter from central casting. For the photoshoots which fetch up on her CD sleeves, and public performances such as Last Night of the Proms in 2009 and this month’s Classic Brits, she pours herself elegantly into a series of dresses in the style of a hot young violinist kidnapped by the marketing department. But there is of course a great deal more to Balsom.In civvies there is only a lingering whiff of the glamour puss. She smiles, she laughs Read more ...
graeme.thomson
Last week Villager-in-Chief Conor J O’Brien was awarded an Ivor Novello award (Best Song Musically and Lyrically, in case you’re curious) for the title track of his Mercury Prize-nominated debut album Becoming a Jackal. Several questions arise from this fact (one of them being: do they have an award for Best Song Musically but not Lyrically?), but the most pressing is this: just how many more gongs will O'Brien win before the decade is out?This man is a very exciting songwriter. The great thing about his compositions is that they rarely go where you expect them to. This sense of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Crikey, no gongs whatsoever for ITV1's Downton Abbey, but you can't grumble about Sherlock lifting the Best Drama Series award at last night's Baftas. Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss's ingenious update of Conan Doyle for BBC One was one of 2010's telly highlights, and you might have thought it would have earned the Leading Actor award for Benedict Cumberbatch. But no, that one went not to Cumberbatch, nor to Matt Smith for Doctor Who (BBC One) nor Jim Broadbent for Any Human Heart (Channel 4), but to Daniel Rigby (pictured below) for his portrayal of Eric Morecambe in BBC Two's Eric and Ernie. Read more ...
Matt Wolf
Surely, any film called Win Win and starring Paul Giamatti is being deeply ironic? After all, you don't expect the hangdog star of Sideways and Barney's Version to do the feel-good Hollywood thing, and it seems of a piece with Giamatti's baleful, ever-defeated demeanour that a scene of him jogging along should end with the actor coming to a panting halt.Life isn't easy in the Job-like landscape in which Giamatti has specialised on screen, to the degree that a clanking boiler beneath his Win Win character Mike Flaherty's New Jersey office begins to sound doomily apocalyptic. Even his six-year- Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The career of Natalie Portman has always had more light than shade. Even her lapdancing sylph in Closer erred towards the porcelain. Casting her in Black Swan was a calculated risk by Darren Aronofsky. The journey of her prim prima ballerina Nina towards a fatal knowledge of the dark side is mirrored in Portman’s odyssey as an actress in a compelling performance which deservedly won her an Academy Award.You probably need a big screen for all the colours to come out. Portman’s emotional march takes her from demure containment to a kind of orgasmic hallucinatory hysteria, and not just in the Read more ...
william.ward
Blue Valentine takes place in two different time frames – the “now” (shot on Red One, which endows even the most intimate of scenes with an almost unsettling widescreen look), and the “then” scenes on Super 16 mm. They are interwoven in what appears to be random fashion, but which on closer inspection provides an almost perfectly choreographed explanation on why this most touching – and beautifully related – love story breaks down and disintegrates so utterly.Was all the effort – which resulted in both Williams and Gosling being nominated for an Academy Award – really worth it? Definitely yes Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It just worked. The rave reactions from critics and audiences, and the hail of Baftas, Oscars and Golden Globes which showered down on it, made it clear that The King's Speech wasn't just any old movie, but a rare moment in cinema history. It cost about $15 million to make, and has grossed $400 million worldwide so far. Now there's music to a producer's ears.Colin Firth's mesmerising portrayal of the stammering Duke of York, thrust traumatically into the imperial limelight by the abdication of his flaky Wallis Simpson-obsessed brother, has elevated him from mere greasepaint aristocracy to the Read more ...
Matt Wolf
That’s the question New York theatre folk are asking this morning, following the announcement of the 2011 Tony nominations, honouring the best of the Broadway theatre season just gone. Radcliffe was thought to be a dead cert for a nomination for his performance as the careerist window washer in the smash-hit revival of Frank Loesser’s How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre. And there were many who thought Radcliffe would go on to win the trophy on 12 June, just as another visiting British film star, Catherine Zeta-Jones, did for her Broadway Read more ...