Buzz
Peter Culshaw
There are 300 or so people in the Westbourne Studios, although it was only a couple of days ago we knew we would be there. We are on the mailing list of The Lost Lectures, and this is the first one. Under the Westway in Acklam Road, we’re in Clash territory. Think of it as post-punk intellectualism. In the course of the evening, several speakers get up and have about 12 minutes to put their case. Like a punk song, they have to make their points with maximum concision with no frills or drum solos. Tickets are a tenner and they say it sold out over a month ago.Billed as “enchanting talk from Read more ...
theartsdesk
Predictably and no doubt justly, it was a good night for The Artist at tonight’s London Critics’ Circle Film Awards. It won Film of the Year, Director of the Year for Michel Hazanavicius and Actor of the Year for its dashing lead Jean Dujardin. Both were at BFI Southbank this evening to pick up their gongs. Fans of Iranian cinema will be cheered to see A Separation also pick three awards, Foreign Language Film of the Year, Screenwriter of the Year for Asghar Farhadi and Supporting Actress of the Year for Sareh Bayat.Of the surprises, the biggest was that Meryl Streep did not walk away Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Since the publication of Sebastian Faulks's World War One-era bestseller Birdsong in 1993, actors and film-makers have been falling over each other to bring a version to the screen. Such names as Joe Wright, Sam Mendes, Ralph Fiennes, Andrew Davies, Eva Green, Rupert Wyatt and Damian Lewis have been connected with a string of abortive efforts, but up to now a short-lived stage version directed by Trevor Nunn has been the only dramatisation to have seen the light of day.All that changes when BBC One's new television adaptation, produced by Working Title Television, hits the small screen on Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
theartsdesk’s Howard Male pointed out that The Slap was overshadowed by BBC Four’s concurrent screening of The Killing. The arrival of the series on DVD brings an opportunity to brush off the lint that might have stuck to it and consider whether it will have a staying power. Will it become a box-set essential?The Slap has divided opinion, especially on the theartsdesk. Reviewing the series after the final episode Howard Male summed up, saying “the fast, sharp script, naturalistic performances and slick but unobtrusive direction has made each episode as worthy of analysis and as nuanced Read more ...
theartsdesk
“Brandon is everyone.” Shame, Steve McQueen’s new film, opens later this week. It is a brutally frank portrait of a man’s struggle with addiction to sex. As McQueen explains here, it was shot in New York for the specific reason that no one in the UK would talk to him about sex addiction. No sex please.And yet the film has a distinctly British flavour. McQueen co-wrote the script with Abi Morgan, the television scriptwriter who has branched out into film and theatre: she wrote the script for The Iron Lady, which opened last week, as well as the plays 27 and, opening this week at the Lyric Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Commercial TV's most influential and controversial figure Peter Bazalgette, mastermind of TV's Big Brother, Ground Force, Deal or No Deal and Ready, Steady, Cook!, is one of four arts knights announced in the New Year Honours. Bazalgette becomes a Sir alongside the Royal Opera House's musical director Antonio Pappano, Apple's chief designer Jonathan Ive and V&A Museum chairman and arts patron Paul Ruddock.Actress Helena Bonham Carter and comedian Ronnie Corbett become CBEs, as do Scottish Gallery director James Holloway, broadcaster Clive James and the record producer Steve Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The 20th anniversary of the death of Serge Gainsbourg is an important milestone, but it has overshadowed the fact that 10 years have passed since the death of an another significant French singer and songwriter, Gilbert Bécaud. The release of Et Maintenant marks the anniversary in fine style, uniting singers across generations, a couple of whom aren’t even French.Although Bécaud only sniffed the British charts once, in 1975 with “A Little Love and Understanding”, and isn’t as raffishly cool as Serge, English-language versions of his songs - “What Now my Love”, "Let It Be Me" and “The Day Read more ...
fisun.guner
Brace yourselves for pure Damien Hirst madness next year. As well as Tate Modern’s retrospective survey opening in April, there will be a “worldwide” retrospective of Hirst’s spot paintings opening next month.The Gagosian Gallery will be hosting the global exhibition of Hirst’s jaunty but dull spot paintings across all of its 11 galleries, from Hong Kong to Paris, and from New York to London, as well as in Los Angeles, Athens, Rome and Geneva.The simultaneous display will total more than 300 of the mostly studio assistant-painted works, from the first spot-on-board created in 1986, to a Read more ...
judith.flanders
Well, the stars were out near Leicester Square, and it was neither the premiere of a Hollywood blockbuster, nor even a clear night. Instead, the stars were in conjunction at Gaby’s Deli, now the hotbed of a revolt against the plastification of London, a valiant push-back against the heart of theatre- and cinema-land being turned into a clone of every high street in the country.Gaby’s Deli has fed hundreds of thousands of audiences before and after shows, with its mix of Jewish deli and Middle Eastern favourites. It has also, crucially, fed thousands of actors, singers, dancers and musicians. Read more ...
David Nice
The Royal Scottish National Orchestra's Glasgow concert tonight has had to be cancelled because of what my Scots godson, in far less extreme conditions down in the Borders, once described as "horrifying wind and rain". The programme? The Suite from Rimsky-Korsakov's The Snow Maiden, about a northern people in the grip of extended bad winter weather until the icy heroine should be melted by the rays of love, and the second act of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, where admittedly it's in the first that ballerina snowflakes eventually get tossed around in a storm and the heroine heads off with her Read more ...
judith.flanders
Even in London’s variegated show-world, something called Cabaret Falafel stands out as an exotic title. To discover that it will take place in a delicatessen, performed by the wonderful Henry Goodman, makes it both more piquant and more explicable, for Gaby’s Deli, a stalwart part of Charing Cross Road and of every London theatre-goer's map of the West End, is under threat.Charing Cross Road has already lost most of its independent bookshops; Chinatown has been trampled on by developers who want to root out the Chinese markets; now the Marquess of Salisbury, ground landlord to Gaby’s, has in Read more ...
joe.muggs
I almost feel duty bound to make a declaration of interest here. I have done several pieces of paid writing for the Red Bull Music Academy, including a piece of course material for this year's Academy, and a few days ago I went to Madrid to see the Academy for the first time on their tab. But here's the thing: music writers rarely, if ever, feel the need to say that they have written sleeve notes or other material for a major record label when writing about an artist on that label, let alone that the label is paying their expenses for a story (which they generally do, as magazine and Read more ...