1970s
Karen Krizanovich
Created in a time when we could be shocked, The Wicker Man shows its power by being shocking still. Conceived by its director Robin Hardy, writer Anthony Shaffer and star Christopher Lee as a reaction to New Age-ism, The Wicker Man delights, thrills and horrifies in this latest version, restored to the American theatrical cut.Bad luck struck The Wicker Man back in 1973, when director Hardy’s debut was caught up, like many films continue to be, in a corporate wrangle. Its release temporarily delayed, the original cut of 102 minutes was edited down to 88, along with a reduction of its marketing Read more ...
Serena Kutchinsky
We all know the backstory of the Mighty Mac, the breakups, the betrayals, the addictions and now, finally, the reunion. These days they're more like the Mellow Mac with the emotional hatchets buried, lingering hugs on stage, and tender tales of their time as struggling Seventies hippies. Few other bands, not even Abba, have mined their private lives for inspiration to the same extent. Unlike today's manufactured pop-ettes who invent relationship strife to grab column inches and make themselves more interesting (Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, I'm looking at you), heartache has always been at Read more ...
Sarah Kent
Gazing out of my window pondering how to start my review of Ana Mendieta, I noticed a creeper engulfing the house at the end of my garden. Having covered the wall, one window and a chimney, the tentacles are spreading along the gutter and over the roof. Meanwhile, my neighbour’s roses have encroached six feet into my territory and, next door the other way, a vine is assiduously working its way along the hedge and into the branches of a tree. Nature, it seems, is quietly overwhelming north London.What struck Mendieta when she visited the archaeological site of Yagul in Mexico, in 1973, was the Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
From no visible source, the instantly recognisable voice of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis croons the words of “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. But the lyrics aren’t in their familiar setting. Alone, he’s stripped from the band, naked and vulnerable. He’s been dead for 33 years, but this was as close as he could possibly be. Moments earlier, a string section had begun a cascading pattern that was more Bernard Herrmann than Joy Division, giving a new slant to this most familiar of post-punk musical landmarks.Live_Transmission was a bold, multi-media reconfiguration of Joy Division’s music by electronic Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Various Artists: Classroom ProjectsIt starts with a plummy voice: “The poems, the words and the music on this record all come from children at primary schools, boys and girls of eight, nine, 10 and 11 years old.” Although the introduction to Classroom Projects sounds like a BBC continuity announcement from a lost era, what follows is more than entertainment. This collection of tracks from albums made by and for British schools is enlightening. Compiled here are music concrête, folk, chamber experiments and songs written about road safety. All of it is amazing.An important release, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
In the remarkably meagre annals of Formula One movies, there are only two scores to beat, to wit: John Frankenheimer's Grand Prix (from 1966), a fictional story which used oodles of real racing footage, and Asif Kapadia's spellbinding documentary Senna (2010). Ron Howard's Rush slots in somewhere between them, being derived from the true-life Seventies rivalry of Niki Lauda and James Hunt but consciously shot and written like a drama.Hunt v Lauda is one of motorsport's great fables, and many fans felt a queasy premonition of disaster on hearing about Howard's project, but it's pleasing to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Roky Erickson & the Aliens: The Evil One Roky Erickson: Don’t Slander Me, Gremlins Have PicturesRoky Erickson is usually depicted as America’s Syd Barrett: the leader of a pioneering psychedelic-era band who took too many drugs, had mental health issues and then dropped off the face of the earth. But unlike Barrett, or even his American contemporary Skip Spence, Erickson returned from the abyss.In 1980 he pulled off the remarkable coup of releasing an album on the British major label CBS. That first solo album – untitled in the UK (but usually referred to as Five Symbols due to Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
The Beach Boys: Made in CaliforniaMade in California is a fantastic thing. Six CDs slot into the inside of the back cover of an LP-sized, full colour hardback book with a padded cover. As an artefact, it’s a triumph. As a career-spanning summary of the best of The Beach Boys’ music it’s flawless. Quibbling about individual tracks which aren’t included is possible, but ultimately pointless. Everything which needs to be heard is here. Made in California is a statement of who The Beach Boys were, are and even – as revealed by some of the originally unreleased tracks – who they could have Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Plays for Britain was a short-lived ITV equivalent to the BBC’s long-running Play for Today, and doesn’t suffer in comparison. Strong writers, directors and actors on their way up – Alan Clarke, Stephen Poliakoff, Howard Brenton, Ray Winstone, Pete Postlethwaite, Miriam Margoyles – all do good work in the sole 1976 series’ six one-hour plays, complete here.Brenton’s The Paradise Run follows three soldiers in a Northern Ireland rendered almost science-fictionally non-specific, though director Michael Apted makes the terror of a soldier’s rural ambush and execution clammily authentic. Future Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
Sly & the Family Stone: Higher!Sly & the Family Stone’s hits “Dance to the Music”, “I Want to Take You Higher” and “Stand!” delivered a sharp wake-up call to the American charts in a period when psychedelia meant new styles of pop were becoming less concise and the mellow vibes of Laurel Canyon were about to begin reducing energy levels. Sly Stone’s gang showed that music could go to fresh places without losing vitality and precision. The case doesn’t need to be made that Sly Stone – born Sylvester Stewart in 1943 – is one of America’s greats, but Higher! makes it anyway with Read more ...
Kieron Tyler
It’s always irritating being told “you had to be there”. Even more irksome is when some author, film director or nostalgic creative decides to record – naturally, they “fictionalise” it – their contribution to some golden era or significant event for posterity. Whether they’re being truthful, bigging themselves up or playing fast and loose with history is beside the point. They’re saying they were there. Olivier Assayas’s Something in the Air is the French director and writer’s entry in the canon and, shockingly, it’s great.It’s great because Assayas has thoughtfully crafted a rich, Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
Shot in Seventies throwback grainy-cam, Amanda Seyfried is superb as Linda Lovelace in the surprisingly entertaining biopic Lovelace. Peter Sarsgaard, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Bobby Cannavle, Hank Azaria, Chris Noth, Juno Temple and James Franco round out a dream cast.Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Howl) and written by Andy Bellin, it charts the harrowing rise of 1970s porn phenomenon Linda Lovelace from her Floridian girlhood as Linda Boreman through to her starring role in 1972’s big grossing adult film Deep Throat - said to have earned up to $600m on a production cost Read more ...