Arts
Grand Dame
Jack and the Beanstalk is a big, sprawling family show that opens with a baffling gesture. A booming voiceover announces…
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. The ballet wasn’t always considered quite such a box of delights
From Russia with love
The enduring appeal of The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky’s ravishing score is nothing less than the sound of Christmas
Mother’s ruin
The Lost Daughter is an adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel about motherhood that says, quite ferociously: it’s complicated. And:…
The potency of cheap music
Christmas: the most vulnerable time of the year. I heard ‘A Winter’s Tale’ by David Essex on the radio the…
Ed Sheeran: = (Christmas edition)
Grade: C= My wife’s ill with Covid and demanding inexhaustible libations and difficult meals, which she will leave uneaten. The…
Wain’s world
Before Tom Kitten, before Felix the Cat, before Thomas ‘Tom’ Cat, Sylvester James Pussycat Sr, Top Cat and Fat Freddy’s…
Jane Campion
A new film by Jane Campion is always going to be a magnetsing prospect and the idea of it suddenly…
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
Grade: B It must have been an interesting day in the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra’s press office when Blair Tindall’s memoir…
Elephants in the room
When you first hear that a remake of West Side Story is on the cards, it’s: God, why? Why would…
Northern lights
It’s not everyone’s idea of fun, a trip to Huddersfield in the depths of November. But as any veteran of…
Tiger feat
Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi is a complicated organism. The action starts in southern India where we meet a…
Eternity in an hour
Growing up on a farm outside Lima, I was aware that indigenous Peruvians did not understand time in the same…
‘I am not able to answer your question’
Hermione Eyre talks to an irascible Paolo Sorrentino about therapy, Vesuvius and why he kept things simple and easy for his latest film
Tolkien rubbish
A couple of years ago, in that near-forgotten era when we could travel almost freely, I canvassed social media as…
The great pretender
Eleven years ago, Kirat Assi received a message on Facebook from a man named Bobby. There was a family connection…
Nitram
Nitram is the Martin Bryant film which sent shivers down everyone’s spine at the mere prospect. Justin Kurzel’s film about…
Sleeker than its scrappy parts
The Barcelona-born choreographer Joan Clevillé has form for off-beat storytelling with a streak of sincerity. Before becoming artistic director of…
The 900 numbers game
We’ve been living through a nostalgia for the 1990s that has lasted longer than the decade itself. That was back…
Foreign parts
There are, perhaps, two types of exhibition visitor. Those who read the texts on the walls and those who don’t.…
I saw a film today, oh boy
My late friend Alexander Nekrassov loathed the Beatles, which I used to think was a wantonly contrary position akin to…
The reel deal
Hand of God is the latest film from Paolo Sorrentino, the Italian filmmaker who won an Oscar with The Great…
Liquid silk
That strain again… it’s the morning after the concert and one tune is still there, playing in the head upon…
The National is the graveyard of talent
Somewhere in the wilds of England a stately home is collapsing. Rising floodwaters threaten the foundations. Storms break over the…
The singing is the star
When I were a lad — back when you could buy the entire back catalogue of the Fall for thruppence…
