sex
alexandra.coghlan
“Where once was certainty is now only void.” The age of John Donne was also the age of Galileo, Milton, of Hobbes, Francis Bacon and, of course, the King James Bible, whose 400th anniversary we celebrate this year. At the intersection of politics, religion and scientific philosophy, Donne’s life under James I holds up a mirror to the conflicted age that produced this extraordinary work of scholarship. Meshing the poet’s biography, his work and social history, Jonathan Holmes has produced a play whose scholarship and subject matter may be serious, but whose theatricality is poignantly, Read more ...
emma.simmonds
With more claret than a blood bank and more skin than a nudist colony, True Blood is HBO at its most gleefully provocative. Unencumbered by the cerebral depth of The Sopranos, the social conscience of The Wire, or the historical obligations of Deadwood, it’s a two-backed beast of a TV show. That’s not to say it’s not smart or satirical, but from its opening credits it announces its dishonourable intentions as a gravelly voiced stranger croons, “I wanna do bad things with you.”Based on the novels by Charlaine Harris, True Blood is the televisual brainchild of Six Feet Under’s Alan Ball. It Read more ...
mark.hudson
That Tracey Emin is one of the defining personalities of our time isn’t in doubt. Even if you never want to hear another second of her guileless wittering, another word about her abortions, traumatic early rape and relentless onanistic neediness, you can't deny that her self-effected transformation from chippy Margate outsider to big-league art-world player represents something extraordinary. As to her work, it's been difficult to be certain of her value - or to entirely write her off - as there's never been the chance to see a big enough body of her work at one time. Read more ...
emma.simmonds
Sensitive but unsparing, the debut feature from French writer-director Katell Quillévéré is a tender portrait of a shy, sweet teenager experiencing the first flushes of womanhood. Don’t be deterred by its somewhat sinister title; although Love Like Poison (or a Un Poison Violent, a phrase taken from a Serge Gainsbourg song) doesn’t dodge uncomfortable truths, it is distinguished and defined by its delicacy, insight and humanity.Returning from boarding school for the holidays, Anna Falguères (Clara Augarde), a taciturn teen, is confronted by the breakdown of her parents’ marriage. Her Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Ian, who is having problems with erectile dysfunction, is freezing his wife out. Susan thinks she may be frigid which, understandably, her husband has taken personally. They’re all a lot better off than Dave, mind. He is in love with a woman who is ideal for him but he can’t seem to get past first base. It's making him suicidal. They all acknowledge there’s a problem, because they’re all in counselling with Relate. Slightly less conventionally, they’ve all agreed to have their sessions recorded and broadcast as part of a documentary. And pushing the boat out a little further, they appear on Read more ...
martin.white
John Ford’s tragedy‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore, set in the Italian city of Parma, tells the story of a young brother and sister, Giovanni and Annabella, who discover a mutual love for each other and embark on a passionate sexual relationship. The challenges of family, church and society increasingly curtail their freedom to pursue their desires, and the play culminates in a terrifyingly brutal and bloody climax. When Ford wrote the play, probably in the late 1620s, he was in his forties and was nearing 50 when it was published in 1633. The play is so often talked about as if the work of a Read more ...
fisun.guner
Dr Michael Mosley has been involved in some pretty hair-raising stunts in the course of filming various biology strands for the BBC. So, I imagine he might have felt something like relief filming his new series Inside the Human Body. With neither potholing nor bungee jumping, nor tearing down a steep hill in a giant, transparent ball in the offing, the only terrifying thing the engaging presenter was required to do, at least for this opening episode of a four-parter, was to hold an hour-old baby. This was a lovely, tender moment in a film that told the story of human conception and Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
It always amazes me that so many commentators dismiss drug experiences as somehow puerile, irrelevant, or even immature. Of course they can be all three but they're also integrally wrapped up in being human, in one's body, alive, so they can also be very much else.Gaspar Noé's film gets this, drawing a direct line, as Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and shamen for millennia before them did, between psychedelic drugs and the process of dying. Enter the Void undoubtedly drags, becoming increasingly turgid during the last quarter of its two hours and 41 minutes, but it aims so much higher than Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The protagonist in a coming-of-age movie is usually an adolescent, but in Cedar Rapids it's a fully-grown adult. The hapless ingénu in question is goofy and naive Tim Lippe (Ed Helms), dedicated 34-year-old salesman for the Brown Star Insurance company of Brown Valley, Wisconsin. In Lippe (pronounced Lippy) world, insurance isn't another name for dirty sales tricks and finding ingenious ways to weasel out of paying claims, but more like a kind of social service. Indeed, Brown Star's boss, Bill Krogstad (Stephen Root), prides himself on the firm's Christian values.When the action moves to the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Back in 2004, Russell Brand performed Russell Brand's Better Now at the Edinburgh Fringe, one of the best shows I have ever seen. In it he described his recovery from addictions to alcohol and drugs and how he had lost his job as an MTV presenter after one too many, er, misjudgments - coming into work dressed as Osama Bin Laden the day after 9/11, for instance.Only Brand made it sound a lot funnier than that, and his descriptions of his life were phrased in the most fantastical and florid language. But he didn't even get a look-in for any awards, which was shameful, and ever since has Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Micky Flanagan was a jobbing club comic for a few years before he shot to stardom with his first full-length Edinburgh Fringe show in 2007, for which he was nominated for a newcomer award at the grand age of 42. The show, What Chance Change?, charted his move from working-class herbert (or ’erbert in Flanagan’s deliciously cockney pronunciation) into middle-class ponce, now living in leafy suburbia and au fait with all things delicatessen, including sundried tomatoes and £5 loaves of bread.Flanagan left school at 15, drifted from one dead-end job to another (including a spell as a Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Anyone turning on BBC Four last night expecting to watch the first episode of Room at the Top will, at least in part, have got what they were expecting: lashings of sex. Only one problem. It wasn't in Room at the Top. Owing to a late-blooming rights dispute, the BBC decided on the day of broadcast not to go ahead with their new adaptation of John Braine's 1957 novel. On the principle that if you would have liked that, then you'll like this, they had a rummage in the archives and produced a rabbit: their version of Fanny Hill, first broadcast in 2008.It's a shame the BBC didn't get their legal Read more ...