Interviews
Lisa-Marie Ferla
For almost 20 years, Drive-By Truckers have been one of Americana's most consistent and enduring voices – and, since 2001’s breakthrough double album Southern Rock Opera, probably the quintessential southern roots rockers too. Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1996 by Alabama natives Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley, the five piece specialises in catchy melodies with more than a hint of the southern gothic, vivid characters and wickedly witty lyrics.The band are perhaps best known for a trio of concept albums: Southern Rock Opera, 2003’s Decoration Day and The Dirty South, released in 2004. Read more ...
David Nice
When I last saw Vadim Repin in action, he was premiering a work of terrific energy and invention which is here to stay, James MacMillan's Violin Concerto. Tonight in Birmingham and on Monday at the Royal Festival Hall he is back on familiar territory with old friends – Vladimir Fedoseyev and the Tchaikovsky (formerly the Moscow Radio) Symphony Orchestra - in one of the pieces which brought him world recognition at 17 as among the handful of truly great violinists in the world today, the Tchaikovsky concerto. The contrast is enough to show the kind of questing player he is, a master Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
Stranger by the Lake is something of a wonder, a superbly made amalgam of Hitchcockian psychological thriller and explicit homoerotica, whose very presence in commercial cinemas defies convention. Yet the sheer quality of Frenchman Alain Guiraudie’s film can’t be denied. Since proving one of the must-sees of Cannes in 2013, where Guiraudie won a directing prize and his film the Queer Palm, it built a word-of-mouth momentum that led to it featuring high on critics’ best-of-year film lists.The location is a pebbly lakeside beach and surrounding woodland; the beach is nudist, exclusively male Read more ...
joe.muggs
Kerri Chandler is quite simply one of the most revered figures in dance music, as much now as when he emerged from the New Jersey club scene onto the international stage nigh on a quarter of a century ago. True to the spirit of the disco, he has only ever released three albums in that time, but has made over 100 12” singles, and maybe twice that number of remixes of other people's work, as well as untold performances as one of the most consistently popular DJs in house music.His style is exceptionally musical, taking rich influences from soul and jazz and heavy on the use of “real” Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Two lanky, totemic marionettes with stern carved faces – one male, one female – coast haltingly around a rehearsal room in Bristol. They are being operated from inside metal framing by actors who coax tentative movement into arms and necks. “Use stillness as one of the things in your arsenal,” suggests a South African voice from the wings. “How are you doing for fatigue?” enquires a patrician English voice.The South African accent belongs to Adrian Kohler of the Handspring Puppet Company. The English director is Tom Morris. The last time they worked together they came up with War Horse. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The tally of Charles Dickens’s biographers grows ever closer to 100. The English language’s most celebrated novelist repays repeated study, of course, because both his life and his work are so remarkably copious: the novels, the journals, the letters, the readings; the charitable works, the endless walks; the awful childhood, the army of children, the abruptly terminated marriage, the puzzling relationship with two sisters-in-law, the long and clandestine affair.Vanishingly few of those biographers have been women. One of the many virtues of Claire Tomalin’s compact life of Dickens – it just Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The news that Philip Seymour Hoffman has died at the age of only 46 robs cinema of - almost unarguably - the greatest screen actor of the age, and certainly its outstanding character actor. Where once there was Charles Laughton, or Ernest Borgnine, for the past two decades there has been Philip Seymour Hoffman. They are all great film actors whom fate has fashioned in doughy clumps of misshapen flesh. The matinee idols got the looks and the girls: the character actors got the meatiest roles and the longevity. His death deprives all lovers of cinema of a longer career that would undoubtedly Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It is the fate of political leaders to be played by actors. In the circumstances Richard Nixon hasn’t been dealt a bad hand. He has been portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon, by Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon on stage and screen and by tall handsome Christopher Shyer in Clint Eastwood’s J Edgar. But towering over them all is Harry Shearer, who has been impersonating Tricky Dicky since Nixon was actually president.Shearer is best known in the UK for his voicing of Montgomery Burns and other characters in The Simpsons, and for Spinal Tap’s priapically challenged bass player Derek Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The transfer this week to the West End of The Weir has reminded theatre-goers of Conor McPherson’s hypnotic powers as a dramatist. In the Donmar's revival of the play you can palpably feel the playwright’s storytelling magic casting its spell all over again as, on a windy evening in a rural Irish pub, character after character unburdens himself - and finally herself - of a supernatural tale.In a way, The Weir - written when he was only 26 - is itself a ghost haunting the playwright’s entire career. It was first performed by the Royal Court in 1997, and was soon being staged all over the Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The late rise of Ruth Jones, who has been made an MBE, is a blessed relief. According to the prevailing rules of ageism and lookism, Jones should still be plugging away in supporting roles, typically as the large gobby sidekick which for years looked like the outer limit of her casting range.But after 20 years in the business and at the ripe age of 41, she won best female comedy newcomer at the British Comedy Awards. The performance that swayed the jury was still a gobby supporting role. But this time Jones – with James Corden (who won the male award) – had written it herself. Read more ...
Caroline Crampton
Borgen wasn’t supposed to be an international hit. Even though viewers all over the world had adored other Danish and Swedish TV exports like The Killing and The Bridge, the show’s creator Adam Price was told early on in the commissioning process that his slow-burn drama about Danish coalition politics was not something that was going to bring him global recognition.Three series later, the show has been sold to 75 different countries. The straightforwardly liberal values espoused by many of its main characters have become so familiar that the word “Borgen” has become a frequently-used Read more ...
Guy Oddy
Age can do interesting things to musicians who have once been regular fixtures in the media and who reappear in the public consciousness some years later. Time, it has to be said, has been kind to the two remaining members of Simple Minds’ original line-up. The band’s guitarist, Charlie Burchill, may look like Stan Smith, the star of the cartoon American Dad but he looks good with it. Jim Kerr also seems to be ageing gracefully. In fact, he looks better than he did almost 30 years ago, having dumped the dress-sense that seemed to take pointers from Blackadder the First, with a beret.Support Read more ...