Reviews
edward.seckerson
Some symphonies are natural curtain-raisers: Sibelius’ Third is one. Music began with rhythm and in this piece the cellos are the distant drummers who bring us back to basics with their curt opening measures. Osmo Vänskä clipped the rhythms are kept them on a tight rein - because he knows how this piece goes, how Sibelius’ search for new found economy and textural leanness lends the music an uneasy tension.There’s an extraordinary passage of complete stasis at the point at which one might expect the development of the first movement to start. Vänskä took the dynamics down to Read more ...
judith.flanders
The famous count could not have a more theatrical pedigree if he tried. The great actor-manager Henry Irving – tall, preternaturally thin, with a fixed glare (due, apparently, to extreme myopia) and a grand manner which gave way, said Bernard Shaw, to "glimpses of a latent bestial dangerousness" – was, said everyone at the time, the obvious source of the Transylvanian Undead aristo as he was created on the page in Dracula by Irving’s business-manager Bram Stoker.TR Warszawa, too, has a theatrical pedigree. In London the company appeared two years ago to acclaim in Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
I think Frankenstein should always be pronounced Fronkenshteen, the way Gene Wilder says it in Young Frankenstein. But that would have been far too frivolous for this intermittently interesting but often irritating film about the legacy of Mary Shelley's feverish teenage novel.The fact that the film's objectives seemed ambiguous didn't help, and its graveyard slot didn't bode well. It looked as if it must have started off as a behind-the-scenes account of how Danny Boyle created his wildly acclaimed stage production of Frankenstein at the National Theatre last year, since extracts from this Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Considering that his last film was set in a prison, it’s perhaps appropriate to say that Jacques Audiard has an arresting track record. The French director has made a handful of very impressive features (Read My Lips, The Beat That My Heart Skipped) but it was when he donned a knuckle-duster for his unflinching tale of prison life, A Prophet, that Audiard really knocked many of us sideways. Expectations are then high for the film that follows. Whilst little could match the impact of his previous picture, by taking things down a notch Audiard has delivered something really quite strange and Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s not quite Iggy Pop strutting across the hands of the crowd, but Efterklang’s singer Casper Clausen's departure from the stage reinforces the bond the Danish mood musicians have with their fans. Trying to keep upright while wobbling on the backs of seats, he is held in position by those close by. This isn’t about attracting attention, but a bridging of the gap between artist and audience. Earlier, Clausen and bassist Rasmus Stolberg had retired to the side of the stage to take in the Northern Sinfonia’s performance of their music. At times, Efterklang are as much spectator as musicians. Read more ...
Nick Hasted
The Shining isn’t the worst horror film ever made. Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel about blocked, alcoholic writer Jack Torrance’s deadly winter as caretaker of the isolated Overlook Hotel is certainly as extraordinary as anything he directed. Its early scenes especially, as Jack (Jack Nicholson), wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and six-year-old son Danny (Danny Lloyd, both pictured below right), wander the hotel as it shuts for winter, have a chilly strangeness.The demented, byzantine theories on The Shining’s meaning explored in the new documentary Room 237 focus on Read more ...
philip radcliffe
Oh, how it’s raining. Streaming down the windows of the dry goods store, Torrance Mercantile, in the Deep South, where Lady Torrance is marooned in a stiflingly small town and a loveless marriage with an awful secret. Depressing. “We’re under a lifelong sentence to solitary confinement in our own lonely skins,” says 30-year-old drifter Val Xavier in his snakeskin jacket, holding onto his only companion in his wanderings, his precious, celebrity-signed guitar.Life is bleak, but we know there’s escapism – and disaster – waiting to burst out. There’s Lady’s repressed sexuality, smothered by 15 Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Among the many things Jenny Eclair does these days - writing novels, panto, appearing on television in various guises - she has found time to go back on the road with Eclairious. TV hasn't curbed her deliciously potty mouth, thank goodness, and even though she says by way of introduction “Please lower your expectations”, she proves to be on fine form, as ever.Her material is much of the same old shtick - railing against the ravages of time on her body and libido, the shortcomings of men and the irritations of other people's children - and whereas a comic such as Jack Dee delivers a similarly Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
With Horror Europa, Mark Gatiss provided further confirmation that he’s now one the most astute, likeable and measured figures contributing to our current cultural landscape. His approach is entirely personal, but never derailed by unfettered enthusiasm or formless digression. A cross-border journey through continental European horror film, Horror Europa was a treat and leagues beyond the celebration of schlock its near-Halloween scheduling and hackneyed title sequence initially suggested.Gatiss rounded up some subjects that didn’t surprise too much: the Italian director Dario Argento, French Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Imagine that Rodin’s Thinker gets bored with sitting, head-on-hand, contemplating the folly of humankind and, springing to life, descends from his lofty perch above The Gates of Hell. Having been immobile for a century or more, he is extremely stiff and needs to limber up: cue for some first-rate body popping interspersed with the kind of heroic poses usually reserved for life drawing classes. This surreal scenario provides a glimpse of the contrasting ideas and impulses informing Russell Maliphant’s latest work. In The Rodin Project, images from the sculptor’s drawings and bronzes are Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Sensing economic opportunity, the Dutch artist Peter Lely (1618-1680) emigrated in his early twenties to London, and was thus the right man in the right place. After the early death of Sir Anthony van Dyck, followed by the Englishman William Dobson, Lely cleverly and charmingly utilised disarming ambition to open up a career for himself and become in due course the most successful painter of his time.Lely’s establishment in Covent Garden became a factory for the production of portraits of grandees, aristocrats, royals and their wives and mistresses. He was the pre-eminent portraitist in Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The appearance of the Goldfinger-era Aston Martin DB5 in the new Skyfall is prompting cheers from audiences, and as Richard Hammond commented in this celebration of Bondmobiles down the ages, the Bond movies have been unique in their ability to turn cars into personalities. From the absurd to the spectacular, 007's transport has rarely been less than memorable, apart from a disastrously lacklustre flirtation with BMWs during the Pierce Brosnan era.Hammond's jokey, blokey, anecdotal approach, mixed with some notable specimens of jerry-built science, made this a hugely diverting hour. He Read more ...