Christmas
Midnight's Pumpkin, Battersea Arts CentreFriday, 21 December 2012
If you have any young siblings, friends or relatives in need of burning off a little energy, send them directly to BAC. With their open-hearted style of rough, circusy-type theatre, Kneehigh are ideally suited to this circular barn of a room. Taking... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 3: Snow Falling in the LaneFriday, 21 December 2012
Christmas might not seem the most appropriate time to ask you, dear reader, if you’ve ever suffered a nervous breakdown. Yet for many this festival of conviviality amid the darkest hours of the year exacerbates a sense of loneliness and desperation... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: Meet Me in St LouisFriday, 21 December 2012
Blessed with the finest (and most infuriatingly catchy) soundtrack of any Christmas film, Vincente Minnelli’s 1944 movie-musical Meet Me in St Louis is a festive classic of a simpler, happier time. Small girls roam the streets in safety getting up... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 2: The Adoration of the MagiThursday, 20 December 2012
Rubens's gigantic masterpiece loudly contradicts the folkloric silent night. This typically muscular painting is deafening in its depiction of the commotion around the holy family when the Magi arrive to offer gifts to the divine king of Christian... Read more... |
The Christmas No 1 Story, BBC TwoThursday, 20 December 2012
Of all the festive institutions, the Christmas No 1 holds a special place in my heart. I was one of those kids who, over the month of December, would carefully plot which CD single I’d be pledging my allegiance to (usually not the ultimate winner,... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: Bad SantaThursday, 20 December 2012
A film for those who see the festive period as a never-ending trudge from bar to bed via a shedload of booze, Terry Zwigoff’s delightfully deviant offering from 2003 gives us a trash-talking, beer-slugging Father Christmas, unimprovably played by... Read more... |
Yuletide Scenes 1: The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston LochWednesday, 19 December 2012
In our chilled Decembers, even when snowless, winter scenes are visually synonymous with Christmas, and Henry Raeburn’s small painting of The Reverend Robert Walker, from the 1790s, skating with abstracted solemnity and perfect balance on... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: ScroogeWednesday, 19 December 2012
Thanks to its unalloyed Dickensianism and Alastair Sim’s wondrous Ebenezer, 1951’s Scrooge is the definitive adaptation of A Christmas Carol – so richly atmospheric it has rendered all other versions irrelevant. Forcefully presenting Boz’s themes –... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: Merry Christmas, Mr LawrenceTuesday, 18 December 2012
David Bowie already had a bit of previous with Christmas, of course, after pa-rum-pa-pumpum-ing through the tinsel with Bing back in 1977. He plays a very different kind of drummer boy in Nagisa Oshima’s uneven but oddly haunting 1983 film, in which... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: The Shop Around the CornerMonday, 17 December 2012
In the early years of the talkies, they sure did a lot of talking, and no actor mastered the tricky art of gabbling on screen quite like the young James Stewart. The Shop Around the Corner (1940) was a perfect vehicle for the versatile but somehow... Read more... |
CD: Katherine Jenkins - This Is ChristmasMonday, 17 December 2012
Does this disc succeed in doing what it sets out to do? Yes, it does, which makes my minor carpings irrelevant. It’s already selling in industrial quantities. But, to quote a review of another Christmas album on this site, “an album full of tunes... Read more... |
12 Films of Christmas: Black ChristmasSunday, 16 December 2012
Flanked by the wonderfully weird tagline, “If this picture doesn’t make your skin crawl…it’s on TOO TIGHT”, 1974’s Black Christmas is amongst the first fully formed slasher pics. Based on a series of murders that took place in Quebec, this Canadian... Read more... |
