Arts
Firefighters of bounty
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol has been with us for as long as we can remember. The story of the unlovely…
The good, the bad and the ugly
TV currently abounds with ‘I thought they were dead’ revival projects: series in which your favourite 1980s movie stars are…
Undramatic melodrama
A heroic Asian woman parachutes into occupied France to work for the resistance and help overthrow the Nazis. This sounds…
Measured in love
If you’re planning on seeing The Last Flight Home at the cinema, don’t make any plans for afterwards as you’ll…
Dazzling gems
The Koh-i-Noor in this Diamond Celebration of 60 years of the Friends of the Royal Opera House garnered the least…
Drift, bloom and sway
Plus: it’s quite clear that MUNA are going to be huge What is it with Icelanders and mushrooms? Just weeks…
Seven women
The catalogue to Making Modernism opens with an acknowledgment from the Royal Academy’s first female president, Rebecca Salter, that in…
Travels with Auntie
Tanjil Rashid on the BBC at 100
Minimalist but highly imaginative
If you live in the suburb of Hawthorn in the midst of all that leafy greenness, in the federal seat…
Mad about the girl
Viewers watching a good romcom need to fall in love with three things. The boy, the girl and the affair…
Doggy style
Have you ever seen film of the England 1966 football team holding the World Cup at the Royal Garden Hotel,…
Sexy time all the way
A hotel bellboy, the story goes, discovered George Best in a luxury suite surrounded by scantily clad lovelies and empty…
Exhilarating: English National Ballet triple bill, at Sadler's Wells, reviewed
Headed for San Francisco, Tamara Rojo bows out of her directorship of English National Ballet with an exhilarating triple bill…
Bruce Springsteen: Only the Strong Survive
Grade: B What’s the worst-ever cover version (after Madonna’s hilarious stab at ‘American Pie’)? I reckon Creedence Clearwater Revival’s interminable…
Dine with the Devil
The Menu is a comedy-horror-thriller set in an exclusive restaurant on a private island and it gives the rich a…
Comic genius
Mathew Lyons on the life lessons of Peanuts
A lustre that is blinding
Does Milly Alcock find her characters inside herself or does she sketch them from outside? ‘It’s both,’ she says. ‘You…
To B or not to B
Paul Weller releasing a collection of solo B-sides is cause for mild celebration. After all, the Jam were one of…
The curious case of Malcolm MacArthur
Non-fiction tells you what happened, fiction affirms the kinds of things that happen. According to Aristotle, anyway. So while journalism…
Hide and seek
Jafar Panahi’s No Bears is, first and foremost, a wonderful film. More than this, you don’t need to know but…
Privates on parade
During the 1964 debut of Carolee Schneemann’s ‘Meat Joy’ in Paris, a man in the audience tried to throttle the…
Gross profit
Gratingly edgy soundtrack, stomach-churning gore, torture, witchcraft, sadism and an indigestible title. The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself sounds…
Towering achievement
The screw may twist and the rack may turn: the Tower of London, in Jo Davies’s new production of The…
