Reviews
Thomas H. Green
So, another programme about Hitler and the Nazis. They mock the Brits all over Europe for our obsession with this subject. During the summer, I worked on a project with Italian associates who found this intense interest roundly bemusing. They subscribed particularly to the old joke that to create the British market’s most successful ever book, it would need to include cats certainly but, most of all, Nazis. So is there anything left for historical writer and documentary maker Laurence Rees to say in his new three-part series?The answer is, “A little, yes”. Having created the gripping The Read more ...
peter.quinn
For the way it combined mercurial, on-the-fly interplay, seismic textural shifts and listening of the highest order, this gig was remarkable. In the space of two continuous sets there wasn't a longueur to be found, such was the incredible union of Black Top #5's boundary-pushing improv and fine-tuned musicianship.Saxophonist Steve Williamson, trumpeter Byron Wallen and vocalist Cleveland Watkiss joined Black Top founders, pianist Pat Thomas and vibist/sampler Orphy Robinson, to explore the intersection of live instruments and the technology of dub, reggae and dance floor.You would search in Read more ...
garth.cartwright
Britain has a grudging relationship with country music – we’ve never produced a successful country singer (although the likes of guitarist Albert Lee and several songwriters have prospered in Nashville) and our love for the likes of Johnny Cash is tempered by a contempt for much of what is marketed as country music. I’m often surprised by how blues, soul and jazz lovers can admit ignorance of a musical form so closely related to other American genres.That this weekend found two major US country stars performing in London – one male and comfortable as a Nashville mainstream icon, the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
The 12th series of the jungle fun is another gathering of micro-celebs, wannabes and has-beens, and a smattering of people you have never heard of - and indeed by the end of the series would still have difficulty identifying in a police line-up, so interchangeable and unremarkable are they.The 10 “celebrities” are the usual suspects: people you vaguely remember from a soap - Helen Flanagan (Coronation Street) and Charlie Brooks (EastEnders); a popster (ex-Pussycat Dolls' Ashley Roberts); and a couple of actors of a certain age - former Doctor Who Colin Baker and Linda Robson of Birds of a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
You can tell by all the important upper case that the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the London 2012 Olympic Games were the shows to be seen emoting at. Emeli Sandé can make the unique boast that she performed on both bills. That’s quite a badge of honour for a musician whose debut album Our Version of Events was released only in February, and whose songwriting career has been at least as much about supplying hits to talent-show graduates. Last night’s full house at the Albert Hall – she’s also in Manchester this evening – will have been drawn by admiration for the voice and the songs, but Read more ...
emma.simmonds
In the 1960s the Kiwi cartoonist Kim Casali started the comic strip Love is… which mawkishly defined love in a series of statements like, “Love is…being able to say you are sorry” - messages still printed on Valentine’s cards to this day. In Austrian auteur Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winning latest, however, love is measured and told in pain: amour means longevity, dedication and the willingness to make difficult decisions. Try putting that on a greetings card.Haneke’s twelfth cinematic feature is a triumph of both simplicity and daring. Amour tells the poignant story of Georges (Jean-Louis Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The moody lights and the smoke make it look like Melody Gardot is emerging from the swamp, probably somewhere near New Orleans, as she begins her set singing a capella. Her walking stick and shades (the result of a bad accident in 2003) only add to the initial feeling that she is the spiritual heir, if not the actual misbegotten daughter of a figure like Dr John, the Night Tripper. As an ex-fashion student, she oozes style, no bad thing in a jazz world that often equates scruffiness with authenticity.With a first rate band joining her on stage, directed by drummer Chuck Staab and Read more ...
Heather Neill
This is a short play, but not a sweet one. Nevertheless, the ban on under-16s and the warning that it “contains themes that some audience members may find distressing” seems unnecessary for more than 50 of its 70 minutes.Shaun is a bolshie 12-year-old in a care home. He spends far too much time in the company of one particular care worker, Mike. The crux of the action can scarcely be a surprise, yet Joe Hammond – whose first professionally produced play this is – director Tamara Harvey and the actors manage to lull the spectator into a false sense of security. In fact, to begin with, Read more ...
theartsdesk
Bill Withers: The Complete Sussex and Columbia AlbumsKieron TylerThis box set is several cuts above the usual major-label, no-frills cheapo collection gathering together a selection of an artist’s albums. Produced with evident care, it’s a superb tribute to a distinctive soul great. The clam-shell box contains Withers’ nine albums, originally issued between 1971 and 1985. Each disc comes in a card reproduction of the original album sleeve, even including a facsimile of the fold-out triptych cover to 1972’s Still Bill. Liner notes, annotation and a brief, newly written introduction from Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The one thing you can rely on when a programme is billed as "The Real" something-or-other is that that is exactly what you won't get. This film, commemorating the centenary of the birth of the great Hungarian conductor, did a thorough job of tracing his career through the great orchestras, concert halls and opera houses of the world, pulling in various stellar musical names and bags of excellent archive footage en route. But anybody already familiar with Sir Georg's life and works would not have come away a great deal wiser.Fortunately it's a great story, however you tell it. A gifted pianist Read more ...
Laura Silverman
Howard Barker is hardly known for light entertainment. In The Europeans, a raped woman gives birth on stage. In Scenes from an Execution, currently at the National, a Renaissance artist is at war with her patrons. In Lot and His God, based on the Genesis story set in the wicked city of Sodom, Lot's wife betrays her husband with an angel. Complex might be putting it nicely.Yet, this sensational production is as seductive as its female lead. The play is tough and knotty and brutal, but it is also compelling and intelligent and eloquent. A cast of four deliver Read more ...
fisun.guner
Sometimes the premise of a film is so intriguing that you wonder how any story could live up to it. Alps is such a film. The title refers to the name given by the leader of a small group whose members impersonate the dead to help the recently bereaved. It puts you in mind of Bart Layton’s The Imposter, released earlier this year, in which a Frenchman in his twenties impersonates a missing Texan teenager. He is accepted by the family, despite looking and sounding nothing like the boy. Part of Lanthimos’s intention is to confound us, and we spend much of the film’s first half in the Read more ...