1940s
Balsom, CBSO, Gražinytė-Tyla, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - made in BrumThursday, 03 October 2019
There’s nothing like practising what you preach. “I say straight out that I regard all so-called 12-tone music, so-called serial music, so-called electronic music and so-called avant-garde music as utter rubbish, and indeed a deliberate conning of... Read more... |
CD: Renée Zellweger - JudyWednesday, 18 September 2019
Renée Zellweger already has strong musical cinema form, Her role as Roxie Hart in Chicago garnered her second Oscar nomination. However, playing and singing Judy Garland is a whole different ball game. The film Judy takes a late-Sixties run of... Read more... |
Evita, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre review - a diva dictator for 2019Friday, 09 August 2019
Following a triumphant resurrection of Jesus Christ Superstar, now playing at the Barbican, the Park works its magic on another of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Seventies rock operas. Jamie Lloyd’s stripped-down, super-sleek, contemporary take... Read more... |
War and Peace, Welsh National Opera, Royal Opera House - bold epic weakened by loosely-directed characterisationsWednesday, 24 July 2019
On the UK's biggest day of shame, it was some relief to tap in to the fury of the Russian people at a much greater national degradation (Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Hitler's in 1941). Though it works even better at the end of the first, "Natasha... Read more... |
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Harold Pinter Theatre review - smart stagecraft, skimpy scriptThursday, 11 July 2019
Better than the 2001 film but likely to disappoint devotees of the book, Captain Corelli's Mandolin onstage works best as a reminder of the identifiable stagecraft of its director, Melly Still. Playful, non-literal, and often endearingly physical (... Read more... |
Svetlana Alexievich: Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories review - anything but childishSunday, 30 June 2019
Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories is a collection of oral testimonies conducted between 1978-2004 with Soviet and post-Soviet citizens who were children during the second world war. They recount strange and terrible... Read more... |
While the Sun Shines, Orange Tree Theatre review - frothy, yes, up to a pointThursday, 13 June 2019
Terence Rattigan completists, and count myself among them, will leap at the chance to see a rare production courtesy the Orange Tree Theatre of While the Sun Shines, a 1943 monster hit for this great English writer that has languished in semi-... Read more... |
Vasily Grossman: Stalingrad review - a Soviet national epicSunday, 02 June 2019
Stalingrad is the companion piece to Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate, which on its (re)publication in English a decade ago was acclaimed as one of the greatest Russian (and not only Russian) novels of the 20th century. For its sense of the sheer... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The Woman in the WindowTuesday, 21 May 2019
The Woman in the Window (1944) was the first of the two riveting film noirs in which Fritz Lang directed Edward G Robinson as a timid New York bourgeois, Joan Bennett as the alluring woman ill-met on a street, and Dan Duryea as the dandified sleaze... Read more... |
Last Stop Coney Island review - the life and photography of Harold FeinsteinMonday, 20 May 2019
This is a real passion project; British filmmaker Andy Dunn spent years building up a relationship with the late American photographer Harold Feinstein, filming him at work and interviewing friends, family and colleagues. The result is a loving... Read more... |
Blu-ray: DetourTuesday, 02 April 2019
“Whichever way you turn, fate sticks out a foot to trip you,” Al Roberts (Tom Neal) says in Detour (1945), as if his native pessimism and self-destructive choices had nothing to do with his inexorable descent into hell.Edgar G Ulmer’s minimalist... Read more... |
The Aftermath review - it looks great but it lacks biteThursday, 28 February 2019
Is it time for the rebirth of the old-fashioned wartime weepie? If so, this time next year The Aftermath will be dragging a clanking heap of statuettes round Hollywood, attached to the rear bumper of its 1940s army staff car. If not…A cynical person... Read more... |
