America
Marina Vaizey
Pre-Raphaelites, eat your heart out; and wherever he is, John Ruskin, once so dismissive of the artist, must be beaming with pleasure. The American landscape painter Frederic Church (1826-1900) was indeed seen as the heir to Turner, and his distinct landscape idiom is encapsulated by a handful of oil sketches – just over two dozen – of scenes from the Hudson River Valley to Petra, Ecuador to Newfoundland, Bavaria to Salzburg, Jamaica to Labrador. It is enough to give a tantalising glimpse of his extraordinary fluency with colour, texture and composition, at the service of a passionate Read more ...
Veronica Lee
It's difficult to categorise Benh Zeitlin's feature debut, which is engaging and flawed in equal measure. Part drama, part dream-like experience, it was made as a riposte to the catastropically poor management of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.We don't know when this story is set, though; it could be modern-day or it could be just as easily in a post-apocalyptic future when climate change is wreaking havoc in the bayous of southern Louisiana, whose strange beauty the camera lingers on in several scenes without drama or dialogue.It's set in a wetland area called the Bathtub by its poor and Read more ...
bruce.dessau
"Gonna shake the house," rasps Mark 'E' Everett on "Bombs Away". It is the first track of his tenth album and it certainly sounds like a statement of intent. Everett has often come across as something of a gloomy rock and roll runt in recent years, but this time around the worm appears to be turning and he ain't taking any cotton-pickin' nonsense any more.It is pleasing to note that the lyrics definitely have a gutsy, defiant optimism about them, albeit alongside Everett's usual misery: "watching the death of my hopes", he sings on the Johnny Cash-tinged, countrified sob story "On the Ropes Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
We know Sylvester Stallone didn't do this movie for the money, since he's surfing the career revival wrought by the astounding success of The Expendables. Perhaps he wanted to work with Walter Hill, here directing his first movie in over a decade. Perhaps Sly just prefers working to loafing around the pool in between bouts of weight-lifting.Derived from a graphic novel by French author Alexis Nolent, Bullet to the Head is a strange beast, cynically and relentlessly violent but leavened with some incongruously smart wisecracks. It has a decent cast, but they're offered next to nothing in the Read more ...
bruce.dessau
Aimee Mann must surely be one of the most unstarry of stars. While most of her fans were still in the bar thinking about what they might have as a pre-gig aperitif, she strolled onstage to join support act Ted Leo for a couple of new songs they have written together. No grand diva entrance here, she just strapped on a bass guitar and stood next to the Costello-ish Leo pulling at those strings. Moral? Never ignore the support act, it might feature the person you've paid to see.When Mann returned after the interval there was no costume change, no big fanfare to signal the start of her set, Read more ...
Karen Krizanovich
"You're a hero, man! You will never pay for a drink for as long as you live." Sounds easy enough, but after the sensational crash sequence in the opening scenes of Flight, heroism will never be the same. The Oscar-nominated script by John Gatins is a morally skilful examination of one terrifying what-if: what if Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who sensationally landed US Airways flight 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009, had been a closet drunk?Also Oscar-nominated is Denzel Washington for his portrayal of Whip Whitaker, heroic pilot with a problem. Striding down a hotel hallway on Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
And so John Adams’s residency with the London Symphony Orchestra reaches its finale – a brisk allegro of a concert with a cheeky coda in the form of the composer’s latest orchestral work, Absolute Jest. One of contemporary music’s most articulate advocates, Adams here swapped pen for baton in a beautifully programmed concert that took a postmodern road-trip across 20th century musical America, guiding listeners along the highways of Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Ives’s Country Band March and off-road for Elliott Carter’s Variations for Orchestra.Ives’s Country Band March is Read more ...
Demetrios Matheou
A rum aspect of the Oscar nominations has been the inclusion of two films that concern American slavery, and which could not be more different: in Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino gives the American slave exactly the sort of empowerment he offered the Jews in Inglourious Basterds – blood-splatter violent and fantastical; in Lincoln, Steven Spielberg is happy to lean on the history books, for a respectful biopic. Lincoln might not be as inventive, or as much fun as Django, but its seriousness and maturity are a welcome alternative to Tarantino’s excess.Spielberg is no stranger to the Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Zero Dark Thirty could have easily gone by the name of the Danish thriller from last year, The Hunt, it’s so furiously single-minded. As it is, the film's striking title is a military term for half-past midnight - the timing of the Navy SEAL raid which shot dead Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on 2 May 2011. The shadowy, nail-biting recreation of that infamous operation forms the film’s finale and is its pièce de résistance. But Zero Dark Thirty also gives us the undisclosed story of the 10-year search for bin Laden: the moments of discovery and revelation, as well as the frustrations and deadly Read more ...
David Nice
“It looks like the Coconut Lounge,” remarked John Adams as he stepped up jauntily to introduce the first of two big string pieces composed 30 years apart. The folk with their drinks at the candlelit tables, though, were never allowed to sit back and let it all wash over them.The seminal Shaker Loops of 1978, heard here in its string-orchestra incarnation of five years later, buffets and charges you as it flies or coasts through space, the polar opposite of the more placid minimalism which inspired it. That was nothing, though, compared to the strange adventure of Adams’ recent String Quartet Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It's not an easy trick for an outsized action hero to grow older gracefully or credibly, but Arnold Schwarzenegger has made a shrewd choice of vehicle with which to launch his post-political film career. The way he tells it, being Governor of California was only ever intended to be a temporary time-out from Hollywood. Back in his first leading role since 2003's Terminator 3, he has little difficulty in seizing control of the screen.However, he has carefully scaled down his ambitions. Playing Ray Owens, sheriff of the small town of Sommerton, Arizona, Arnie has adopted a laboured senior Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
As promised, he's back. Arnold Schwarzenegger's last major movie appearance was in 2003's Teminator 3: Rise of the Machines, probably the worst of the Terminators but a lucrative one nonetheless. Since then he has popped up in a few cameo roles including an appearance as Prince Hapi in the Jackie Chan/Steve Coogan remake of Around the World in 80 Days, but from 2003-2011, he was mostly preoccupied with being governor of California. And handling a few personal issues of course, which led to him separating from his wife Maria Shriver in 2011.Anyway, this week the 65-year-old Arnold gets top Read more ...