Arts
He loves me, he loves me not
The premise for the unsnappily titled Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time is this: a Hungarian…
The Oscars
Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland,predicted to win big at this year’s Oscars, is not a terrible film. It’s a slight, sentimental Grapes…
In league with the devil
The most headline-grabbing of these three pop docs was Framing Britney Spears, part of the New York Times Presents documentary…
Nothing to see here
Calls is the very antithesis of televisual soma. In fact it’s so jarring and discomfiting and horrible that I think…
Britney Spears
The arts world in general —and with it theatre in particular— is opening up. Not only is the Botticelli to…
Johannes Fritzsch
It is hard to imagine a city with a richer cultural history than Dresden or a better place for a…
Bands on the run
Twitter was awash with mockery last week, after Adam Levine, the singer of the American group Maroon 5, was interviewed…
Initial impressions
The Finborough’s new show is a love story with the male partner absent. Two women, one Irish and one American,…
Double act
Well, this a bit awkward. A fortnight ago, in my last TV column, I confidently asserted that, despite the involvement…
‘His paintings are perfectly meant for our times’
Musa Mayer talks to Hermione Eyre about her father Philip Guston’s cancellation and her fear that he will for ever be known as the artist who painted the Ku Klux Klan
Alive and kicking
Rachmaninov’s First Symphony begins with a snarl, and gets angrier. A menacing skirl from the woodwinds, a triple-fortissimo blast from…
Twitter, but with actual screaming
For my 13th birthday in 1995 I requested — and got — my own ‘line’. This meant that I could…
Barack and the Boss
Barack Obama wants the world to know how much he loves singing. In his new podcast, which takes the form…
Thriller instinct
Judas and the Black Messiah is a biopic about Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, but it’s not your regular biopic…
Christopher Plummer
A few weeks ago that great Canadian actor Christopher Plummer died. Everyone knows him as Captain Von Trapp opposite Julie…
Botticelli to Van Gogh: Masterpieces from the National Gallery, London
Saint Zenobius was a Florentine nobleman who was converted to Christianity and baptised as an adult, ultimately becoming the first…
The kids are not alright
Raya and the Last Dragon has everything you might want nowadays from a major Disney film — feisty kick-ass heroine,…
Sky news
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a musical fantasy set in a Nordic town near the Arctic circle. Johan is a magician…
Lightbulb moments
Last Saturday on Radio 2 Claudia Winkleman was inaugurated as the host of what was formerly Graham Norton’s mid-morning spot.…
Tantric opera
I don’t say this lightly, but after 20 years of opera-going, Luigi Rossi’s Il Palazzo incantato might just be the…
Dumb and dumber
Here’s a worried question I want to plant in your head: when is TV drama going to start depicting the…
The Regent Canaletto
Quite late in life Walter Sickert paid his first visit to Peckham Rye. He was excited, apparently, because he had…
Sentimentality served junkie-style
The thing to remember about Chet Baker, an old acquaintance says of the errant jazz musician in Deep In A…
Bedroom pop
A short history of lo-fi, by Robert Barry
Anne-Marie Duff
Melbourne was just stirring into public cultural life when the hotel quarantine mishap led to that last alarming lockdown that…
