internet
Page One: Inside the New York TimesMonday, 19 September 2011As an elegiac score plays, bails of early editions of the New York Times are bundled and tossed into a fleet of vans, which roll out into the dawn city streets, to distribute the news. The conviction shared by many in this documentary about the... Read more... |
Misfits: Vegas Baby!, 4oDThursday, 15 September 2011Question. How do you kill off a TV character whom, just a few episodes ago, you and your fellow scriptwriters went out of your way to render immortal? How… and why? Over two short seasons and one Christmas special, the writers of the BAFTA-winning... Read more... |
Little Dragon, The Boiler Room at Corsica StudiosWednesday, 13 July 2011“It's like an advert for American Apparel,” said my companion a song into the set – and she had a point. The elegantly poised electropop of Little Dragon is so sharp, so cool, so impeccably internationalist in its outlook and presentation that,... Read more... |
TrustSunday, 03 July 2011Do you know where your teenagers are? If they're smart, they'll be somewhere watching Trust, the sophomore directorial effort from actor David Schwimmer that turns out to be as deftly compelling as it is unnerving. The depredations of the internet... Read more... |
Two Boys, English National OperaSaturday, 25 June 2011Nico Muhly had one humble aim for his first opera. He wanted to create an episode of Prime Suspect, he told me last week. "A grand opera that functions as a good night's entertainment." There's no doubt he's achieved that. Two Boys, receiving its... Read more... |
DVD: The Social NetworkThursday, 17 February 2011In films featuring computer whizzes, there is always a key scene in which, to illustrate the whizziness, a star actor bashes on a keyboard at implausible warp speed. The Social Network is the first major film to respond to the drama inherent in... Read more... |
ChatroomThursday, 23 December 2010With its finger-on-the-pulse tagline, “Welcome to the anti-social network” and respectable credentials, Chatroom is an intriguing prospect. It’s based on an acclaimed stage play, directed by the visionary Hideo Nakata (Ringu, Dark Water), with a... Read more... |
Ash, Liquid Rooms, EdinburghThursday, 11 November 2010So, did they play all the singles? Well no, not all of them, given that they’ve released 26 of the buggers in the past year alone, frisbeeing one out every fortnight in the sort of kamikaze experiment contemplated by only the truly inspired or the... Read more... |
Interview: Eric Whitacre, Virtual ChoirmasterTuesday, 19 October 2010McDonald's (the hamburger people) are rarely acknowledged for their contributions to the arts, but without them we may never have witnessed the meteoric rise of composer Eric Whitacre. When he was 14, he heard a casting call on the radio for a... Read more... |
The Social NetworkWednesday, 13 October 2010Success has many parents, the old saying goes. And that’s certainly the case in David Fincher’s new film, an enthralling dissection of one of the great success stories of our age. When Harvard undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg devised a putative version... Read more... |
Double standards for music blogs?Thursday, 11 February 2010It has been reported today that Google - via its Blogger and Blogspot services - has been closing down popular music blogs and wiping their archives without warning, citing copyright violation by those blogs who post downloadable mp3s of the tracks... Read more... |
The Virtual Revolution, BBC TwoSaturday, 30 January 2010If I wanted to be solipsistic about this, I could say that the opening episode of The Virtual Revolution, the new BBC Two series about the changes wrought by the internet, is also the story of theartsdesk.com. It certainly felt personal at times.... Read more... |