New York
Nanny review - no spoonfuls of sugar in this spooky taleSaturday, 26 November 2022
Nanny is being marketed as a horror movie, and arachnophobes should certainly beware, but it’s also a stylish exploration of race and class by African-American writer-director Nikyatu Jusu.Its heroine is Aisha (Anna Diop) a Senegalese graduate... Read more... |
She Said review - a necessary newsroom thrillerThursday, 24 November 2022
Five years have elapsed since New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey revealed that dozens of women had accused the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual abuse and harassment over three decades. Based on Kantor and Twohey’s book about... Read more... |
Armageddon Time review - James Gray goes back to skoolFriday, 18 November 2022
Was it lockdown that did it? Forcing filmmakers to sit at home, contemplate their lives, and conclude that just as soon as the masks came off, it was time to shine a light on their youth?Since Covid struck, we’ve seen Kenneth Branagh’s growing-up-in... Read more... |
Album: Christeene - Midnite Fukk TrainFriday, 18 November 2022
Christeene is not so much a musical entity, as a performative assault, an artist who pushes drag somewhere visceral, caustic, wilfully edgy and defiantly unpolished. The creation of New York-based, Louisiana-raised Paul Soileau, her videos and shows... Read more... |
Blues for an Alabama Sky, National Theatre review - superb cast and production for this period hitSaturday, 22 October 2022
The cynical might think Pearl Cleage’s play had been expressly written to address the over-riding issues in today’s USA – abortion and contraception rights, gun control, homophobia, racism. But the cynical would be wrong, as Blues for an Alabama Sky... Read more... |
Classical CDs: Death, dragons and sea shantiesSaturday, 22 October 2022
The Playhouse Sessions: Bjarte Eike, Barokksolistene (Rubicon)The Playhouse Sessions is a follow-up to the irresistible Alehouse Sessions, in which Bjarte Eikke and his Barokksolistene recreate a 17th century London pub gig, where sea shanties... Read more... |
Only an Octave Apart, Wilton's Music Hall review - instant charm, infinite varietyTuesday, 04 October 2022
You know you’re in good company the minute these two appear on stage: they are so splendidly what they are, comfortable in their own skins and perfect in role-play. Justin Vivian Bond, consummate trans cabaret artist, meets Anthony Roth Constanzo,... Read more... |
Album: Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It DownWednesday, 28 September 2022
It’s a minor tragedy that Yeah Yeah Yeahs arrived just in time to be bundled in with a spurious “new rock revolution,” because they were so much more than rock. The Strokes, The White Stripes, The Libertines all may have had decent enough songs, but... Read more... |
Carolee Schneeman: Body Politics, Barbican review - challenging, in-your-face and messyThursday, 15 September 2022
Life is messy and so is Carolee Schneeman’s work. She wanted it that way. Breaking down the barriers between art and life, between inhabiting a woman’s body and using it as primal material, was a key objective.And if this meant appearing naked in... Read more... |
Ken Auletta: Hollywood Ending - Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence review - if the tide had turned in 2002...Wednesday, 07 September 2022
It was not until October 2017 that The New York Times ran a front page story by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey with the title “Harvey Weinstein Paid Off Sexual Harrassment Accusers for Decades.”A few days later, the board of the Weinstein Company,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The SapheadTuesday, 16 August 2022
Buster Keaton made his name in a series of two-reel shorts made from 1917 onwards; The Saphead, from 1920, was his first starring role in a feature film.It’s in no way comparable to the classics which Keaton produced and directed in his mid-... Read more... |
Nightclubbing: The Birth of Punk Rock in NYC review - cheap thrillsSaturday, 06 August 2022
Bankruptcy, rubble, rape and murder: Manhattan in the Seventies could be grim, as multiple New York punk memoirs make clear. The trade-off was the art, steaming and burning in the stinking, crucially cheap degradation. Punk was just one symptomatic... Read more... |
