Reviews
Graham Fuller
As he did with his Spanish idyll Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen supplies his fourth London film, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, with an anonymous male American narrator whose air of irritatingly breezy omniscience distances us from the proceedings, limiting the empathy we may feel for the four protagonists. This is a shame, because two of them - tetchy, unhappily married Sally (Naomi Watts) and her divorced, needy mother Helena (Gemma Jones) - are, for all their faults, characters we hope to see prosper.As he did with his Spanish idyll Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Woody Allen Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Yesterday was the 150th anniversary of Italian unification under Victor Emmanuel II - the exiled king whose supporters chanted "Viva Verdi!" (Verdi = Victor Emmanuel, Re D'Italia). Naturally, Italy's premier orchestra, the Orchestra dell'Accademia di Santa Cecilia, under their conductor Antonio Pappano, chose to celebrate this in Basingstoke.Basingstoke has, in The Anvil, a thunderingly good 1,400-seater concert hall regularly visited by top orchestras (Maazel and the Philharmonia soon, the Bolshoi soon after). It is a fine and moving thing to see that as anonymous a place as this Hampshire Read more ...
judith.flanders
For those in the know, Sergei Polunin has been marked out as “the one to watch” from his schooldays. Since he won the Prix de Lausanne in 2006 and joined the Royal Ballet the following year, he has been “the next big thing”. Well, I’m here to tell you, after last night’s performance of Rhapsody, he is not the next big thing. He is the big thing now.He gave the performance of a lifetime, and, even more astonishingly, looked so comfortable that it is perfectly clear that, at only 21, he has a dance-lifetime of such performances well within his grasp.I know, I know, I sound like a teenager in Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Route Irish isn’t the St Patrick's Day parade along Fifth Avenue in New York, but the “most dangerous road in the world”, from Baghdad airport to the relative safety of the heavily fortified Green Zone. With impressively opportunistic timing, Route Irish’s makers release it the day after the Irish saint’s celebrations but anyone expecting shamrockery will be disappointed - Ken Loach’s latest is a smile-free affair set among the lawless private security firms that “supported” the allies after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.Route Irish isn’t the St Patrick's Day parade along Fifth Avenue in New York Read more ...
Ismene Brown
At the 11th hour (as we all know from the current telly series), English National Ballet has pulled a gorgeous plum out of its back catalogue that throws open vistas of what a ballet company should be: Serge Lifar’s sumptuous Suite en Blanc. Why this beauty, laced with the hot Spanish deliciousness of Eduard Lalo’s 1881 music, hasn’t been done for 35 years can presumably be put down to its sheer difficulty, because this is a ballet that bathes the eyes in lipsmackingly tricky, astronomically stylish choreography - stylish as only French classical ballet can be.It’s dressed in white and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Former Los Angeles Times crime reporter Michael Connelly struck gold with his books about LAPD detective Harry Bosch, before pulling a deft gear-change with the creation of criminal defence attorney Mickey Haller in The Lincoln Lawyer. The movie version, directed by Brad Furman and scripted by film and TV veteran John Romano, sticks pretty close to Connelly's novel, even if Matthew McConaughey's lead character has mysteriously morphed from Mickey to Mick.Though rooted in a familiar low-life Los Angeles peopled by surly cops, hookers, petty criminals and irascible prosecutors, the film lifts Read more ...
aleks.sierz
Home truths have a unique power to grab at your entrails and tear at your peace of mind. But so often, in so many families, the truth remains too painful to acknowledge, and togetherness is bought by means of keeping secrets. And, of course, in any family drama worth its salt, those secrets will inevitably come tumbling out. On stage, the effect can be both thrilling and emotionally powerful, as evidenced by Ryan Craig’s excellent new play, which opened last night at the National Theatre.Set entirely in the Rosenberg home in Edgware, the story begins with a visit from the local rabbi on the Read more ...
josh.spero
Why were any of us watching Lily Allen: From Riches to Rags last night, about the pop star's move from selling millions of tracks to stacks of vintage clothes? It was not because we need a lesson in the hardships of starting up a business - Allen bought all the stock out of her musical profits and her office was thick with roses. No, it was because the real intruded into a reality show: this was not car-crash TV - it was miscarriage TV.Any rubberneckers waiting to be entertained would have been disappointed by last night's first episode: we had a promise of tragedy at the start, and the Read more ...
howard.male
Why do bands still insist on dabbling in drum’n’bass? It was always an absurd, overwrought style, even when it first assaulted our eardrums in the mid-1990s. It’s more like a technological malfunction of the drum machine than a natural, felt groove, hurtling along, as it tends to, at a ridiculous 200 beats per minute. Ironically, Marseilles’s Watcha Clan probably think it’s one of their strengths that they throw a couple of tracks into their live set powered by this anachronistic rhythm, but they are much more effective when utilising less familiar grooves.Rich Mix is a relatively new north- Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Comedian Richard Ayoade’s kinetic, charismatic and accomplished directorial debut follows an introspective adolescent with his feet clamped firmly on dry land but with his head all at sea. In Submarine, our protagonist haplessly negotiates the quagmire of first love, whilst simultaneously dealing with his parents’ romantic disillusionment.An adaptation of Joe Dunthorne’s acclaimed novel, Submarine tells the story of Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts), an utterly unremarkable 15-year-old living in a Welsh village who is elevated to greatness, albeit only in his own mind. Oliver is a dictionary- Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
Blancmange is a sweet pudding commonly made with milk or cream and sugar thickened with gelatin, cornstarch or Irish moss, and often flavored with almonds, says Wikipedia. Not sure about the Irish moss bit. Blancmange is also, as any fule no, a fabulous Eighties synth duo, playing on a tour for the first time in 25 years. I know there are a few of you out there who prefer your Pet Shop Boys. Personally, I find the PSBs too much. Every track rammed full of too much stuff, eventually they make you as sick as if you had stuffed your face with dessert all night.Despite their name (originally they Read more ...
Veronica Lee
A show that began as that hippest of 21st-century technology, a podcast, gains new life in a transfer to the dinosaur of television having been given a makeover with old-school Hanna-Barbera-style cartooning. The Ricky Gervais Show started life on the Guardian website in 2005, where Gervais and his long-time collaborator Stephen Merchant sat in a studio and talked to - well goaded, really - their former radio producer Karl Pilkington, the “little round-headed buffoon" from Manchester. After it became the most downloaded podcast in the world, America’s HBO channel picked it up and fashioned Read more ...