1930s
David Jones, Pallant House Gallery, ChichesterWednesday, 04 November 2015
Switching between the orderly and the chaotic, David Jones’ depiction of Noah’s family building the ark immerses us in the drama of the moment while simultaneously holding us at some point out of time, to emphasise the story’s ancient roots.... Read more... |
Jekyll & Hyde, ITV / From Darkness, Series Finale, BBC OneMonday, 26 October 2015
It's the age of the prequel, sequel and origin story, and the ingenious Charlie Higson has decided that now is the time to give Robert Louis Stevenson's divided-self myth a superhero-style makeover. Action-packed and a little bit shocking, this... Read more... |
Giacometti, National Portrait GallerySunday, 18 October 2015
Any number of puzzling and fantastical stories were told by Alberto Giacometti in the construction of a personal mythology that helped secure his reputation as an archetypal artist of the avant-garde. Less heroic than the oft-quoted accounts of his... Read more... |
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, English National OperaSunday, 27 September 2015
“The music quacks, hoots, pants and gasps”: whichever of his Pravda scribes Stalin commandeered to demolish Shostakovich’s “tragedy-satire” in January 1936, two years into its wildly successful stage history, didn’t mean that as a compliment, but it... Read more... |
DVD: How to be Eccentric - The Essential Richard MassinghamTuesday, 28 July 2015
Improbably described by the French archivist and critic Henri Langlois as “the greatest technician and the greatest poet of British cinema”, it seems incredible that Richard Massingham isn't better known. A doctor by training, his first shorts were... Read more... |
13 MinutesTuesday, 14 July 2015
The plot to assassinate Hitler that everyone knows about was on 20 July 1944. It had its Hollywood moment in 2008 with Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Von Stauffenberg. That film unfortunately arrived on the coattails of... Read more... |
The Saboteurs, More4Saturday, 27 June 2015
The 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark, documenting the Allies' mission to stop the Nazis from going nuclear, is to historical accuracy what David Starkey is to tact. Or common decency. The Saboteurs however, a Norwegian/Danish/British TV co-... Read more... |
Barbara Hepworth, Tate BritainWednesday, 24 June 2015
One of the earliest surviving sculptures by Barbara Hepworth is a toad made from a khaki-coloured, translucent stone; you can imagine it cool and heavy in your hand, not so very different from the animal itself, in fact. Made nearly 30 years later,... Read more... |
Samson et Dalila, Grange Park OperaSunday, 21 June 2015
From “Printemps qui Commence“ (spring is beginning) to “Springtime for Hitler"... that really is quite some intellectual leap. Patrick Mason, an experienced and respected opera director, has uprooted the tale of Saint-Saëns's opera from biblical... Read more... |
DVD: The Dancing Years, The RatTuesday, 09 June 2015
The Dancing Years and The Rat are seemingly very different films. The Dancing Years (***, 1950) is a British musical which defines frou-frou. With a springing-off point in the dizzy world of the waltz-obsessed Vienna of 1910, its lingering shots of... Read more... |
Edmund de Waal: I Placed a Jar, Brighton FestivalTuesday, 19 May 2015
What strange things netsuke are. Tiny sculptures, usually made from wood or ivory and depicting anything from figures, to fruit to animals, they were first made in the 17th century as toggles to attach pockets and bags to the robes worn by Japanese... Read more... |
Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor, Royal BalletTuesday, 12 May 2015
On my way to the Woolf Works opening last night, I made the mistake of reading The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel. It was a mistake because even the briefest immersion in Woolf’s prose was a thousand times more exhilarating than the... Read more... |
