California
Emma Cline: Daddy review - scintillating short stories by the author of The GirlsMonday, 28 September 2020
The Girls, Emma Cline’s acclaimed debut novel of 2016, was billed as a story based on the Manson murders. But in fact, like some of the stories in Daddy, her new short-story collection (written over a decade, several have already been published in... Read more... |
Bill & Ted Face the Music review - modestly delightfulSaturday, 19 September 2020
Beavis and Butthead’s vicious grunge-era gormlessness remains interred, Wayne and Garth (and their stars’ careers) are too superannuated to revive. But here are the slightest of Gen X’s idiot double-acts, back again to save the universe in a time-... Read more... |
Album: Allison Neale - Quietly ThereTuesday, 08 September 2020
Seattle-born Allison Neale’s alto saxophone sound is instantly appealing. Her playing has the light wispy, airy quality from the "cool", "West Coast" school of Paul Desmond. One day last year, she spent just six hours (10am-5pm minus an hour for... Read more... |
Penny Dreadful: City of Angels, Sky Atlantic review - the good, the bad and the unspeakableThursday, 02 July 2020
American history of the 1930s and ‘40s suddenly seems to be all the rage on TV, cropping up in the reborn Perry Mason, Das Boot and now this new incarnation of Penny Dreadful (Sky Atlantic). The original was a blowsy Gothic mash-up of Dracula,... Read more... |
Album: HAIM - Women in Music Pt. IIIFriday, 26 June 2020
If the title of their third album alludes to the lazy assumption of female-fronted as a musical genre, HAIM’s revenge is to try a little bit of everything, while never sounding anything less than themselves. Women in Music Pt. III elevates the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks - Orange Crate ArtSunday, 21 June 2020
Orange Crate Art makes most sense in the context of Van Dyke Parks’s solo career rather than that of Brian Wilson’s. For the former it was preceded by Tokyo Rose, an orchestrated set tackling the intersections of American-Japanese cultural and socio... Read more... |
Album: Phoebe Bridgers - PunisherMonday, 15 June 2020
Girl-wonder Phoebe Bridgers is one of the brightest stars to come out of the ever-renewing pool of creative talent that bubbles away in Southern California. Her new album, following the release last year of the brillant Better Oblivion Community... Read more... |
Desiree Burch, Soho Theatre On Demand review - fantastical storytellingMonday, 25 May 2020
You may have seen Desiree Burch, a Californian now living in London, on The Mash Report on BBC One. She's an engaging and energetic storyteller and Desiree's Coming Early, her 2019 Edinburgh Fringe show directed by Sarah Chew, is a fantastical tale... Read more... |
Cuck review - tediously nihilisticFriday, 17 April 2020
Deep from the heart of Trumpland comes Cuck, a deeply unpleasant film about a totally repellent character. Directed and co-written by Rob Lambert, the film opened simultaneously last autumn in the States with Joker, with which it shares an... Read more... |
Album: Huey Lewis and the News - WeatherWednesday, 12 February 2020
Huey Lewis and the News were an unlikely mid-Eighties phenomenon. Their Sports album was a mega-success for a band already approaching early middle age. Their Fifties feel, given a contemporary polish and boosted by association with cinematic... Read more... |
Oscars 2020: a 'Parasite' love-in caps a night of firstsMonday, 10 February 2020
The 92nd Academy Awards saved its surprises for a final stretch that saw Parasite make history as the first foreign language film ever to win the Oscar for Best Picture, pipping to the post the presumptive favourite, the World War One drama 1917 (... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Night TideTuesday, 21 January 2020
Dennis Hopper’s first starring role, in Night Tide from 1961, as a naïve but curious young sailor bewitched by a siren, offers a strange mirror to his role as the evil Frank Booth in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986). If anything, he offers a preview... Read more... |
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