Listed
Graham Fuller
Seeing and hearing A Field in England's Richard Glover sing "Baloo, My Boy" while in bedraggled character reminded me of the power often exerted by songs explicitly or implicitly germane to a movie's narrative. They tend to have far greater resonance than songs added during post-production to build atmosphere, stoke emotions, or sell soundtrack albums, not that there aren't stirring examples of extra-diegetic songs: Tex Ritter's "The Ballad of High Noon", "The Windmills of Your Mind" in the 1968 The Thomas Crown Affair, "I Wanna Be Adored" in Welcome to Sarajevo, and "Skyfall", to name four Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Hysteria is back. Terry Johnson’s comedy was written for the Royal Court in 1993, and for its 20th anniversary it is being revived at Hampstead Theatre. It is a homecoming in a sense: the play is set in the Hampstead home of Sigmund Freud, where he receives unexpected visits from Salvador Dalí and a young woman who cannot keep her clothes on. Freud will be played by Antony Sher.The intimate nature of a psychoanalytical exchange would seem to make Doctor Freud an ideal subject for theatre. In fact he has many more screen than stage credits. Indeed, if you scroll through this edition of Listed Read more ...
emma.simmonds
John Lennon once said, "You have to be a bastard to make it. That's a fact. And the Beatles were the biggest bastards on earth." As that statement would suggest, to be a bastard is not to be a villain - nothing quite so obvious. The reality is that bastards are often apparent gents, with the veneer of respectability concealing a character who's ruthlessly ambitious, insufferably smug, a button-pusher, schemer or cheater.Cinema has seen its share of scintillating scoundrels. Indeed, some actors have made entire careers out of playing such men - Michael Douglas to name but one. So why do they Read more ...
fisun.guner
Poetry has always inspired artists. Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Dante’s Divine Comedy are two of the most enduring. And according to Art Everywhere, of which I will say little here but have written about elsewhere (see sidebar), the nation’s favourite painting is inspired by a more recent poem: JW Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott shows the ill-fated heroine of Tennyson’s famous verse moving inexorably towards her watery death “like some bold seer in a trance”. The second favourite is, incidentally, another narrative illustration of an ill-fated heroine on the point of meeting her watery fate – Read more ...
James Williams
This week sees the release of the eagerly anticipated Alan Partridge film, Alpha Papa. And while there are those of us who simply cannot wait to cringe along with Norwich’s favourite talk radio host, there is a rather vocal minority that are indignant at having their favourite sitcom sullied by the limitations of the movie format. While it would be churlish to judge a film on the basis of an innate distrust of the movie-making business, a precedent has been set when it comes to much-loved comedies making that considerable leap to the big screen. We cherrypick a selection of films that have Read more ...
theartsdesk
There's good cops and bad cops, hard cops and soft cops, old cops and young cops, funny cops and straight cops, maverick cops and by-the-book cops. The pairings are legion, the permutations endless. The movies teem with buddy cops, unlike paired with unlike to bring down bad guys. They've all pretty much got one thing in common: it's a guy thing. Yes, when it comes to reeling in the guilty parties, not a lot of sisters get to do it for themselves. The release of The Heat, a shoo-in as this summer's big comedy hit, has found us trawling through the archives to celebrate other instances of Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
As someone detached from pop music (more a world, classical, jazz kind of guy) I conducted an unscientific experiment during the past few months to try and discover what the really big tunes out there were. Travelling in Paris, Mumbai, Morocco and elsewhere, I found songs that have gone global in a massive way. I kept hearing them everywhere – in clubs, by the hotel pool, in bars and taxis, blaring out of shops. The process was made easier by Shazam, the app which allows you to identify a piece of music by pointing your phone at the source (better, admittedly, for Daft Punk than for Read more ...
fisun.guner
Leonard Cohen sang, somewhat indiscreetly, about Janis Joplin “giving head” on his unmade bed, Bob Dylan penned a song to his hero Woody Guthrie, and Don McLean famously sang “the day the music died” about Buddy Holly. The list of pop tributes to pop icons – whether the subject is a distant hero, a dead lover or a good friend – is long. If one were to compile a list of all the songs written about Elvis that list alone would exceed the number below (as it is, I’ve pushed the boat out by including 4 Elvis-inspired songs among the 14, including one penned by Clive James during his folk music Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Even now, as Edward Snowden floats in the diplomatic neverwhere of Sheremetyevo airport, someone somewhere is plotting the movie. Currently the story of the man who blew the whistle on the National Security Agency looks like it could still play out as farce, but it may yet turn to tragedy.Whistleblowers are bad news for governments and major corporations but, as this week’s Listed demonstrates, gold-dust for storytellers. The narrative arc is more or less the same: hero or heroine of lowly status takes on big bad villain and gets to be heard, at some personal cost. Works every time. It Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Imagine a scenario in which Daniel Day Lewis is cast as himself. To get into character, he adopts his method technique of total immersion. For months he watches all of Daniel Day Lewis’s movies, studying his voice and physical movements to nail those telltale Daniel Day Lewis ticks. He reads all his EPK interviews and pores over his acceptance speeches. Only when fully prepped is he ready for the cameras to roll, and on set he goes so far as to stay in character between takes, asking people to address him as “Dan”. Naturally he cleans up in awards season.Actors have always answered the Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The onerous task of recording all 205 national anthems for playing at the Olympics medal ceremonies has fallen on the London Philharmonic Orchestra. An edited group of 36 players has recorded the anthems at the Abbey Road Studios in 60 gruelling recording hours over six days. But which would try their patience most?The anthems - every one known in the world, good, bad and indifferent - have been arranged by British composer and cellist Phillip Sheppard, who did the British anthem arrangement for the Beijing Olympics closing ceremony. Judging from a selection below, he would be giving the LPO Read more ...