Arts
The truth about modelling for a great artist
Artists’ models seldom get a chance to tell their side of the story. Yet one model, Anthony Rudolf, believes they…
This silly and drivelling piece of tosh
Every so often something comes along that is so bad it fills the soul with wonder and dismay. It seems…
An agreeable new 2D fighter
Grade: B The final boss of Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls, who’s called the Champion (they could have tried harder), is…
The terror of Russian prisons
The competition must be pretty stiff for ‘World’s worst airport to be caught with drugs in your baggage’: Bogota? Miami?…
A true visual spectacle: Edinburgh’s The Galloping Cure reviewed
Those lights! Thinking back on The Galloping Cure, Missy Mazzoli’s new opera for the Edinburgh International Festival, that’s what lingers:…
A perfect little exhibition on the Isles of Scilly
I was in the most south-westerly pub in Britain, the Turk’s Head, on the Scilly island of St Agnes (population:…
A classic Alan Ayckbourn that’s made for Roger Allam
How the Other Half Loves is the play that established Alan Ayckbourn’s name as a writer of farce. Frank and…
When did the Cure become universally beloved?
My, how other so-called legacy acts must envy the Cure. There are plenty of bands of 40 or 50 years…
Ridley Scott’s latest is a ‘hang on, what?’ movie
Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic The Dog Stars is his third film in four years after Napoleon (disjointedly strange) and Gladiator II…
Renoir was a master – let no one tell you otherwise
It was summer 1874 at Claude Monet’s house in Argenteuil on the Seine just outside Paris. Édouard Manet arrived from…
This devastating portrait of Americana
It’s more than 75 years since Lee J. Cobb opened in Elia Kazan’s production of Death of a Salesman and…
The genius of Romeo Castellucci
Birds do not sing. They bleep and rattle and buzz like a dial-up modem. That we consider what comes out…
This giant of romanticism deserves so much more
Pity Carl Maria von Weber. On the morning of 5 June 1826 a servant knocked on the door of his…
Is Alley Cats really that bad?
We first saw Sybylla, the heroine (in every sense) of My Brilliant Career, at a society gathering in 1900 Australia…
Stars can’t rescue this snooze-fest
The film & Sons, in which a patriarch summons his estranged sons to let them in on a secret, has…
The joy of Toto’s ‘Africa’
There comes a point in most bands’ lives at which their appeal has become too selective for them to sell…
The star of the Fringe
Attention spans at Edinburgh are brief. With thousands of shows on offer, the punters have to make a split-second decision…
The man who – inadvertently – invented the 1970s
Style, self-evidently among those who pursue an interest in such affairs, is, according to the Comte de Buffon, the man…
An aggravated splendour
Rod Liddle, who died on 2 August, was a journalist of genius and you could only feel a bit wonder-struck…
Carlos Acosta just gets better with age
No ballet dancer has been a ‘household name’ in Britain for more than a generation now – even mention of…
The slow death of the Edinburgh Fringe
The Edinburgh Fringe is getting bigger. Last year’s total of 3,893 shows is surpassed this year by 4,206 productions. More…
The Shards is easily the best drama on TV
My father once drove down the King’s Road with Marianne Faithfull and Terence Stamp in a paisley-painted Mini to buy…
A joyous opening to Edinburgh
The title of the opening concert of the Edinburgh International Festival is also the thesis statement for this year’s entire…
The wisdom of Anthony Bourdain
Tony is a biopic of Anthony Bourdain, the late, great chef who, in fact, considered himself a writer first –…
A much-deserved revival of a formidable British composer
Grade: B+ ‘Cheltenham Symphonies’, they used to call them – a catch-all term for the kind of large-scale, traditionally inclined…
