Arts
Lounge-funk for vampires
There’s a case to be made for John Cale being the most daring ex-member of the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed…
A frog’s-eye view
Whenever I listen to Great Lives on Radio 4, which is often, I am reminded of the gulf between fame…
Made to order
Kaleidoscope is a fairly routine eight-part heist drama with a supposed novelty spin: apart from the beginning and the end,…
Don’t bank on it
Bank of Dave is the ‘true(ish)’ story, as this puts it, of Dave Fishwick, the Burnley businessman who wanted to…
Worlds gone mad
‘Graphic’ scenes of violence are now associated with film, but the word betrays an older ancestry. The first mass media…
Bitter sweet symphony
Norman Lebrecht on his hatred of Beethoven’s Pastoral
Feast of epiphanies
January 6, the end of the twelve days of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany when the three wise…
Polar exploration
The National’s new comedy by April De Angelis is a clever and amusing attempt to deliver that most elusive artefact,…
The power and the glory
Todd Field’s Tár stars an insanely glorious Cate Blanchett – if she doesn’t win an Oscar I’ll eat my hat…
Crocks of gold
There are various staples of still life painting, some symbolic, some not. Skulls and musical instruments suggest the transience of…
The strangest figure in pop
On 3 February 2003, the emergency services in Los Angeles received a call. ‘I’m Phil Spector’s driver,’ a voice told…
Petrol, seawater and blood
Tanya Gold talks to cult director Mark Jenkin about his ominous vision of Cornwall
I, Spy
Is the new year a time to reflect on the misjudgments of a life spent opining? Thirty years ago, when…
Write and wrong
Sam Mendes’s Empire of Light, which he wrote as well as directed, is billed as a ‘love letter to cinema’…
Pre-Raphaelite Tintin
Orlando opens with a pack of Virginia Woolfs on stage. All wear the same costume of horn-rimmed spectacles, long tweed…
Hit and myth
I’m generally not a fan of New Year’s resolutions, but one occurred to me recently as the younger members of…
Turkish delight
A strange new virus has infected half the world but the cure is worse than the disease: authoritarian tyranny, in…
The stuff that dreams are made of
Trivia question: name a famous Lithuanian. Google came up with four I’d never heard of and one I had: Hannibal…
Conduct unbecoming
Richard Bratby on monstrous maestros
The intensity of Christmas
What a box of contradictions Christmas is. There’s the quest for presents – which can get urgent and exhilarated in…
Sentimental value
What’s wrong with sentimentality? The answer, I’d suggest, could either be: a) its almost bullying insistence on us having emotions…
The lady vanishes
Corsage is a biopic of Empress Elisabeth of Austria who was prized for her beauty and fashion sense and may…
Going like the clappers
A dank Tuesday evening in a West End theatre. The auditorium is barely two thirds full. The play is nothing…
