Portugal
The Metamorphosis of Birds review - picture perfectTuesday, 15 March 2022
How do you make a film about death, love and loss that avoids being sentimental, maudlin or pretentious? Take your cue from Portuguese artist Catarina Vasconcelos.Her debut feature, The Metamorphosis of Birds unfolds as a series of exquisite... Read more... |
Frankie review - dying for nuanceThursday, 27 May 2021
American filmmaker Ira Sachs excels at crafting throughtful relationship dramas in which middle-class characters confronted with crises or unanticipated realisations gain valuable emotional knowledge. His best works – Forty Shades of Blue (2005),... Read more... |
Album: Rodrigo Leão - O MétodoSaturday, 17 October 2020
Music increasingly escapes categories: labels are of course useful, but they also fail to evoke the richness of practices which are led by musical experiment and imagination rather than obedience to one of the genres or sub-genres that have... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Vitalina VarelaTuesday, 06 October 2020
Much of Vitalina Varela takes place in near darkness, the lack of movement in several scenes enough to make you think you’re watching a succession of still images. Pedro Costa’s protagonists may wrestle with a multitude of intractable issues, but... Read more... |
Diamantino review - loopy satire slaps BrexitSaturday, 11 May 2019
Imagine Cristiano Ronaldo, virtuosity intact, as buffed, blinged, and coiffed as ever, but with the sophistication and sexual maturity of an average seven-year-old, and you have a fair idea of Diamantino’s protagonist.If that sounds like this barmy... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lisbon: Aga Khan Music AwardsWednesday, 03 April 2019
The inaugural Aga Khan Music Awards, a three-day event held last weekend in Lisbon, celebrated nearly 20 years of wide-ranging work dedicated to the preservation of ancient and threatened cultures, an impressive programme of educational initiatives... Read more... |
Sir Cliff Richard: 60 Years in Public and in Private, ITV review - bachelor boy bounces backTuesday, 11 December 2018
It was when he was on holiday at his agreeable estate in the Algarve in August 2014 that Cliff Richard got a phone call telling him his Berkshire home was being raided by the South Yorkshire Police. It was the beginning of a four-year ordeal in... Read more... |
VOD: That Good NightThursday, 04 October 2018
The straw hat is surely the season’s requisite headgear for great actors embarking on their valedictory screen performances. It was there on the venerable Harry Dean Stanton’s head through much of Lucky, and the great John Hurt makes it his own in... Read more... |
DVD: Al BertoFriday, 17 August 2018
There are plenty of reasons to be apprehensive about biopics of poets. The activity of writing is most often, after all, anything but cinematic, unless its moments of creativity are forced, while the “myth” of the poet all too easily becomes... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Setúbal Music Festival 2018: youth leads the wayFriday, 15 June 2018
"Get those creatures off the stage, or I won't answer for what I'll do". The exclamation of the Prima Donna in the backstage prologue of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos, about to share her grand opera with lower forms of theatrical life, seems... Read more... |
CD: Dreamweapon - SOLThursday, 15 February 2018
Dreamweapon’s second album, SOL, is a spaced-out trip of oceanic psychedelia that calls on the listener to pay full attention and sink into their potent motoric vibes. Free of any hippy-dippy fluffiness, Dreamweapon may be experts in laying down the... Read more... |
DVD: The OrnithologistTuesday, 07 November 2017
While bird-lovers will certainly not be disappointed by Portuguese auteur João Pedro Rodrigues’ new film, the ambitions of The Ornithologist stretch considerably beyond such avine fascinations. Its opening title, “Whoever approaches the Spirit will... Read more... |
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