Catholicism
DVD: SpotlightTuesday, 24 May 2016
Journalism is not what it was and nor quite is the journalism movie. Spotlight is released as a home entertainment with a sticker on the packaging announcing its Oscars for best picture and best original screenplay. It is certainly a gripping story... Read more... |
Bruckner 8, LSO, Rattle, BarbicanFriday, 15 April 2016
Last and most imposing of Bruckner’s completed symphonies, the Eighth invites and frequently receives architectural comparisons. Such talk of pillars and cathedrals could only be wide of the mark in the wake of this unconventional, beautifully... Read more... |
The ClubSaturday, 26 March 2016
The Chilean director Pablo Larrain completed his loose trilogy about his country confronting the legacy of its Pinochet years four years ago with No. Striking a distinctly upbeat note after the two films that had preceded it, Tony Romero and Post... Read more... |
SpotlightSaturday, 30 January 2016
Communities function in different ways depending on their constituencies, to note just one of the many salient points made by the deeply compelling and equally disturbing Spotlight. The Catholic church in Boston for years closed ranks and shut... Read more... |
Blood and Gold: The Making of Spain - Reconquest, BBC FourWednesday, 16 December 2015
The second instalment of this three-part series on the history of Spain (from the BBC in collaboration with the Open University) told a tale that is probably still relatively unfamiliar in the Anglophone world. That’s despite the fact that one of... Read more... |
The Heresy of Love, Shakespeare's GlobeThursday, 06 August 2015
Helen Edmundson’s The Heresy of Love may be set in 17th century Mexico and follow the conflict between strict religion and personal development, but its theme of a woman denied her voice by a surrounding male hierarchy retains real contemporary... Read more... |
MacMillan's St Luke Passion, King's College ChapelSaturday, 04 April 2015
The St Luke Passion I heard last night was my second sung Passion of the day. The first was in a parish church as a central part of the liturgy of the day on Good Friday: nothing too fancy, as befits an amateur choir, the words of St John as set by... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Bilbao: Niki de Saint Phalle at the Guggenheim MuseumThursday, 02 April 2015
This is work that wears its heart on its sleeve. That’s what gets you in the end in this big retrospective of the work of Niki de Saint Phalle. The French-American artist, who died aged 71 in 2002, is probably best known for two very different... Read more... |
Rubens and His Legacy, Royal AcademySunday, 25 January 2015
What does it mean to be a great artist? Is it enough for your work to be admired, studied, emulated and quoted by contemporaries and subsequent generations, or is the value of art judged by a more complex set of criteria? By considering the extent... Read more... |
Rubens: An Extra Large Story, BBC TwoSaturday, 03 January 2015
The ebullient presenter, writer and director Waldemar Januszczak opens his enthusiastic and proselytising hour-long film on Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) by reading out a series of disparaging quotes from other artists. William Blake thought... Read more... |
Giovanni Battista Moroni, Royal AcademyWednesday, 29 October 2014
Written in the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists continues to underpin our understanding of the Renaissance, and its author is blamed, often with some justification, for a multitude of art historical anomalies. But there can be... Read more... |
DVD: In the Name ofMonday, 10 February 2014
Gay cinema in Poland is emerging slowly, for understandable reasons, which makes Malgoska Szumowska’s accomplished, if somewhat traditional drama In the Name of something of a ground-breaker. Not least because its story is centred around the country... Read more... |
