politics
Tom Birchenough
There’s much more to Brendan J Byrne’s engrossing, even-handed documentary Bobby Sands: 66 Days than its title might at first suggest. The timeline that led up to the death on 5 May 1981 of the IRA prisoner provides the immediate context – an increasingly dramatic one as the countdown of Sands’s hunger strike nears its inexorable conclusion. But the film’s interest is broader, not least in examining his role as a symbolic figure, both in the immediate context of the conflict in Northern Ireland, and across a much wider historical perspective.The drama of Sands’ life and death has already Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
With Ukraine embroiled in conflict and a currency crisis the Odessa International Film Festival does not have the budget to bring in big stars. In any case, most of those pampered A-listers would have been nervous to go to what they or their advisers would have assumed to be a conflict zone. One really has to to admire the Festival’s volunteer-fuelled enthusiasm - it may be the underdog of international film fests, but it delivers an enlightening, elegantly organised and hugely enjoyable event. The Brit element was out in relative force this year. The winner of the festival’s main prize Read more ...
stephen.walsh
What happened was this. I found my way, not without difficulty, to the Barry Memo Arts Centre, got my ticket, had a chat with the librettist, stopped to order an interval drink, then turned round to discover that the entire audience had disappeared, as if eliminated by a Star Wars de-atomiser, or whatever those things are called. Two or three of us ran outside, looked this way and that, and after a few panic-stricken minutes tracked down the audience, who had gone right round the building in a crocodile and re-entered it by a door on the far side.Yes, you’ve guessed it. It was a “promenade” Read more ...
Tom Birchenough
Weiner is the story of a rapid ride from comeback to meltdown. It’s an enthralling journey to witness, even if you sometimes feel like averting your eyes. What can be more inexorable than a political life – not to mention a private one – imploding on screen in a documentary where the subject has promised full access to the filmmakers, and sticks to that pledge regardless?The story of Anthony Weiner’s 2013 bid to become mayor of New York made front page news in America. He was clearly an extremely articulate and dynamic Democrat political operator, but that wasn’t the main issue. What made his Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
For some of us, Siegfried is a perfect opera. Like L.627 it stubbornly observes the Aristotelian rules of space and time to cut a generous slice of life. There are almost no set-pieces to break the flow of one-on-one conversations, accusations, confessions, arguments. These encounters are inevitably stifled by a concert staging, where singers address themselves to us, never to each other. Peter Mumford’s video projections set the scene with trees and glowing embers like a piece of slow TV on YouTube or BBC4.Wisdom also holds that Siegfried is the Scherzo of the Ring. Maybe not only for its Read more ...
Barney Harsent
And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister, who called the referendum in an attempt to secure an election victory, while Brexit has been spearheaded by a shambolic, and mildly Europhile, thatched homunculus, who simply wants the other guy’s job. We are, essentially, collateral damage in a spectacularly damaging career move.But with the shouting is over, it’s time for the really important Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Shamed and reviled, Richard Nixon had the misfortune (albeit self-authored) to be the star of one of the murkiest chapters in American Presidential history. It's not much compensation for him now, but he has become something of a goldmine for film-makers.Anthony Hopkins went to town on him in Nixon. Zack Snyder brought us a grotesque, parallel-universe Nixon in Watchmen. Frank Langella revelled in the wily, devious President in Frost / Nixon. Now here's Kevin Spacey with what could be the best Nixon yet, in Liza Johnson's delicious fantasy-satire about the day when the President met the King. Read more ...
Barney Harsent
Never in the field of human voting has so much been demanded of so many by so few... Triggered by a moment of prime ministerial hubris and made reality by a Tory leadership bid and the relentless UKIP catcalls, the referendum is putting control of our EU membership into the hands of a British public who are heavy on emotion, but light on facts.Not that this is surprising. When predicting the future, points tend to be moot, and this has meant that both campaigns have been based largely on fear and self-interest. The one thing that has shone through so far is a horrible disregard for the Read more ...
Graham Fuller
The release of Louise Osmond’s biographical film about the director Ken Loach, who turns 80 on 17 June, has been timed to perfection. Twelve days ago, Loach’s I, Daniel Blake won him his second Palme d’Or. He came out of retirement to make it after the Conservatives won the General Election last year. “Bastards,” he calls them, with a schoolboy-ish smile, at the beginning and end of the documentary.Except in the first half of the Thatcher ’80s, Tory policies have specialised in eliciting Loach’s fiercely oppositional cinema – so have anti-socialist Labour policies. For 53 years, he has been Read more ...
aleks.sierz
The sense of humour is a funny thing. It raises questions about whether what we find funny can tells us anything about who we are, or what we might become. The case of Screaming Lord Sutch, the semi-legendary rock singer and founder of the satirical Official Monster Raving Loony Party, begs the question: is his wild eccentricity an example of our national pride in tolerating bonkers people, or just an individual act of wonderful silliness? And what does it say about our political system that although he lost every one of the 41 parliamentary elections that he stood in as a candidate, he still Read more ...
Mark Sanderson
Diversity has replaced perversity as a staple of modern drama. Whereas once upon a time an unenlightened viewer might cry – on seeing two men kiss – that they were going to leave the country before homosexuality became compulsory, a scene of mixed-race rutting can still ruffle a dodo’s feathers today. Monday’s episode of Marcella, for example, with Nicholas Pinnock’s bare buttocks pumping away on top of Anna Friel, ploughed a new furrow on peak-time ITV.The fifth episode of Blue Eyes opens with an idyllic scene in which a white mother, Asian father and two cute kids enjoy a sunlit breakfast. Read more ...
Samuel West
Everyone’s talked a lot about the E bit of EU recently. I want to talk about the U part.There’s a phrase in The Book of Common Prayer that even as an atheist I find inspiring. It's part of the marriage service, and it says that marriage was ordained "for the mutual help, society and comfort which the one ought to have of the other." It's a beautiful, nurturing idea. Help, society and comfort. We could all do with a bit of that.But the word that binds them, that makes them work, is mutual. What I want for myself I must be prepared to do for others. That's how it works in a marriage, and that's Read more ...