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Christmas on theartsdesk: Brainteasers, Bran Tub, and the Best of 2011

theartsdesk Wednesday, 21 December 2011

Any day now most of us will be hunkering down and for the most part drawing a curtain about the world outside. Before that happens, we’d like to tell you about theartsdesk’s plans for Christmas and the New Year.

Nick Broomfield on filming Sarah Palin

Nick Broomfield Tuesday, 20 December 2011

I didn’t really know that much about Sarah Palin. I remember being kind of blown away when she got up on that stage with all those kids and gave that rather brilliant speech which seemed to be an enormous breath of a fresh air for the Republican Party. This film was done before the Tucson shootings. I don’t think she’s revealed just how horrible she could really be. To that extent I think I had a fairly open mind.

Opinion: Is The X Factor back for good?

Jasper Rees Saturday, 20 August 2011

And so it begins again. Earlier this summer I attended what has become a regular British ritual, exactly like Wimbledon and Henley, the Chelsea Flower Show and Ascot, with only one or two small discrepancies.

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3D Dance looks Skywards with Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake

Ismene Brown Friday, 24 June 2011

Last March’s Japanese earthquakes and tsunami, as we know, brought devastation to hundreds of thousands of Japanese. But it also caused a crisis in the 3D film industry, just as it is attempting to be born. The most important 3D tape stock finishing factory in the world was swept away by the waters.

theartsdesk in Hay: Books Etcetera

Adam Sweeting Thursday, 02 June 2011

Hollywood-on-Wye: Rob Lowe talks to Mariella Frostrup at Hay

Watching bookaholic punters tramping down windswept country lanes in hiking boots, anoraks and rucksacks instantly alerts you to the singular quality of the Hay Festival, though it's surprising that nobody has grasped the glaring opportunity to set up a tent selling Alfred Wainwright's fell-walking guides and Kendal Mint Cake. But where else can you find such a high density of starry names and media taste-makers in a soggy field on the Welsh border?

Interview: Actor James Purefoy

Hilary Whitney Thursday, 10 March 2011

James Purefoy: 'When you’re an actor you’re constantly walking this tightrope of being lauded one minute and completely humiliated the next'

A disproportionate number of column inches seem to have been devoted to James Purefoy’s matinee-idol looks, his ability to carry off a pair of breeches and the amount of time he appears on television naked. However, while he has admittedly spent much of his career swaggering around in period costume - Vanity Fair with Reese Witherspoon, Mark Antony in HBO’s...

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Beyond good and evil: Silk goes to court

Adam Sweeting Sunday, 20 February 2011

Maxine Peake and Rupert Penry-Jones (second left and centre) head the cast of Peter Moffat's new six-part legal series

The legal drama has become a staple of stage and screen, for a variety of excellent reasons. All of human life really is there, from love and hate to good and evil, crammed into the claustrophobic cockpit of the courtroom. Adding an extra squirt of kerosene to an already explosive mix is the fact that, as Dr Gregory House likes to say, “Everybody lies.”

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Interview: Film Director Beeban Kidron

Hilary Whitney Friday, 21 January 2011

'People do not have proper witness to their lives and I am really interested so I start asking them questions'

It’s a fairly safe bet that when director Beeban Kidron made her first film, the documentary Carry Greenham Home (1983), she never envisaged that 20 years later she’d be directing a whopping great blockbuster about a Chardonnay-swigging young woman’s desperate quest to get a ring on her finger - Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004). But then Kidron’s career trajectory has never been predictable.

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theartsdesk's Christmas Presents Guide

theartsdesk Monday, 13 December 2010

With the lightning speed of online delivery, there is still masses of time to select the best and most enjoyable presents for Christmas, thanks to the taste and wisdom of theartsdesk's pack of writers.

The X Factor Xamined

theartsdesk Monday, 13 December 2010

And so we reached the climax of Series 7, long awaited by cognoscenti but greeted with mounting apathy by non-believers. Though some had held out hopes for boy - infant? - band One Direction, it was live poll favourite Matt Cardle who ultimately romped home to victory.