Arts
Once you get over its political correctness, Netflix’s Godless is a cracker
Boy came to me the other night in a state of dismay. ‘Dad, I just turned on Match of the…
It’s impossible to muff the role of Scrooge – yet Rhys Ifans manages: A Christmas Carol reviewed
Maximum Victoriana at the Old Vic for Matthew Warchus’s A Christmas Carol. Even before we reach our seats we’re accosted…
My favourite frum film of the year – thus far: Menashe reviewed
Menashe is a drama set amid Brooklyn’s ultra-orthodox Hasidic community. It is performed entirely in the Yiddish language. It is…
Xu Zhen Eternity-Buddha in Nirvana
When state governments put money into cultural events they like them to be large and ‘exclusive’. Well, the Victorian Government…
An exceptional new film about Jane Goodall unearths a remarkable love story
There are times when our national passion for cutting people down to size is a little tiring. I left Brett…
Why does James Purnell think radio needs to be ‘reinvented’?
Grade: A A dimbo pop reviewer for one of our national newspapers suggested that on this album, her ninth, Björk…
If you like Schoenberg, you’ll like Björk’s Utopia
At the launch of the Christmas radio schedules last week, James Purnell, director of radio (and much more) at the…
A non-sniggering look at the latest developments in the lucrative sex-robot market
This week on Channel 4, we watched a cheery 58-year-old American engineer called James going on a first date. He…
Huge audiences, gongs galore and Broadway awaits Everybody’s Talking About Jamie
Everybody’s Talking About Jamie opened at the Sheffield Crucible in February for a standard three-week run. The show is based…
The heart is unstirred in Haneke’s morose critique of a fractured society: Happy End reviewed
The films of Michael Haneke wear a long face. Psychological terror, domestic horror, sick sex, genital self-harm — these are…
After you’ve seen a few, you start to think, ‘Oh no, not another!’: Modigliani at Tate reviewed
‘It’s odd,’ Picasso once mused, ‘but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre…
Some of the greatest moments at HCMF 2017 were the gentlest
The musicians of Ensemble Grizzana are arranged in the usual way for their concert at St Paul’s Hall in Huddersfield.…
Bronwyn Oliver in her studio 1995
Her life may have ended eleven years ago at the age of only 47, but sculptor Bronwyn Oliver remains a…
Composer Nico Muhly on drugs, cults and James MacMillan
There’s a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie in which Tippi Hedren is emptying a safe while a cleaning lady silently…
Baxter Dury on London going to the dogs, his acclaimed new album and his dad
In the last week of October, the middle-aged Baxter Dury and the boy Baxter Dury were brought together. The 45-year-old…
An overrated news satire directed by an inexplicably popular director: Network reviewed
The inexplicable popularity of Ivo Van Hove continues. The director’s latest visit to the fairies involves an updated version of…
Presenting a quiz is far from easy
It’s a weird sensation getting your child back for an extended period when for the previous decade you’ve been packing…
The Chinese classical-music revolution up close
On a bullet train out of Shanghai, a nuclear family catches my eye. The father, weather-beaten and wearing an ill-fitting…
Who will be the first woman on the moon?
Wally Funk is on a mission — to make real her dream that a woman will walk on the moon…
Like a Melanie Phillips column set to bad music: Morrissey’s Low in High School reviewed
Grade: B- It is truly painful to criticise someone who greatly enrages the Guardian and the leftie music press, and…
Musically superb but there isn’t a moment where one feels for anyone: Semiramide reviewed
The late arch-Rossinian Philip Gossett regarded Semiramide as a neoclassical work, vaguely and alarmingly suggesting to me a musical equivalent…
It will amply satisfy all your comeuppance needs: Battle of the Sexes reviewed
Battle of the Sexes recreates the famed, culture-changing 1973 tennis match between 55-year-old Bobby Riggs, a self-proclaimed chauvinist, and 29-year-old…
Elizabeth Harrower returning to Sydney in 1959
It is a wonderful story in itself. After a self-imposed ‘exile’ of four decades, Elizabeth Harrower became an internationally acclaimed…
A short history of flash photography
All photography requires light, but the light used in flash photography is unique — shocking, intrusive and abrupt. It’s quite…
What can we learn from Jeremy Bentham’s pickled head?
Under the central dome of UCL — an indoor crossroads where hordes of students come and go on their way…
