1940s
Bryn Terfel, Britten Sinfonia, Barbican review – a moment of re-connectionMonday, 05 October 2020
This concert by Sir Bryn Terfel and the Britten Sinfonia, the very first concert given at the Barbican in front of an audience since 15 March, was surely in need of some stronger explanation than that offered by the blurb for the evening, namely “... Read more... |
Blu-ray: BeanpoleSunday, 13 September 2020
Kantemir Balagov’s second feature announces the arrival of a major new talent in arthouse cinema. Made by the Russian director when he was just 27, and premiered at Cannes last year, where it won in the “Un Certain Regard” strand, Beanpole... Read more... |
The Plot Against America, Sky Atlantic review - fascism comes to 1940s USAWednesday, 15 July 2020
Based on Philip Roth’s 2004 novel of the same name, The Plot Against America flashes back to the global turbulence of the 1940s to depict a counterfactual America that turns to the dark side. Instead of the re-election of Franklin D Roosevelt for a... Read more... |
Blu-Ray: A Foreign AffairSunday, 21 June 2020
In the year when we should be reflecting on seventy years of peace in Europe but are too occupied with present day viruses, Brexit, and racism to remember our past, it’s timely that a film about the Allied victors occupying Berlin in 1947 should be... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: John Lee Hooker - Documenting The Sensation Recordings 1948-1952Sunday, 14 June 2020
John Lee Hooker’s recording career began on Friday 3 September 1948. He’d attracted the attention of the Kiev-born Bernard Besman, who was in Detroit after his family moved there in 1926 following five years in London’s East End. By the 1940s Besman... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Distant JourneyTuesday, 26 May 2020
Czech director Alfréd Radok’s Distant Journey (Daleká cesta) has an unprecedented place in the history of cinema of the Holocaust. Initially released in March 1949, it has been called the first fictional treatment of the Jewish experience during the... Read more... |
Hollywood, Netflix review - rosy escapism serving good causesThursday, 14 May 2020
If you're catering for wish fulfilment, you might as well go the whole hog. Some say that Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, in their latest peachy extravaganza, aim no higher than the cheesier fantasies of the late 1940s Hollywood they take into... Read more... |
Now is the hour - 103 and trending: Dame Vera Lynn eight decades after her debutThursday, 23 April 2020
Last Sunday evening I was making lentil soup (words I never thought I’d type) when Radio 4’s discussion of wealth, or lack thereof, gave way to a profile of Dame Vera Lynn. She was “trending”, her NHS fundraising duet with Katherine Jenkins of “We’... Read more... |
The Rake's Progress, Complicité online review - well-projected journey from pastoral to madhouseWednesday, 08 April 2020
One way to look at Stravinsky's celebrated collaboration with W H Auden and Chester Kallman is as a numbers opera in nine pictures, four of them indebted to Hogarth's series of paintings/prints. So it's not surprising that visual flair has marked... Read more... |
Return to Belsen, ITV review - Jonathan Dimbleby retraces his father's journey to a nightmare worldWednesday, 08 April 2020
When the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany was liberated by the British 11th Armoured Division on 15 April 1945, the BBC’s reporter Richard Dimbleby was there to record the occasion. It was Dimbleby’s report for BBC... Read more... |
Sinatra: All Or Nothing At All, Netflix review - epic two-parter on pop's first superstarThursday, 26 March 2020
Coming in at around four hours, in two parts, this 2015 documentary is ostensibly about Ol’ Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra, but really, via the prism of his existence, it’s as much about America’s journey through the first two thirds of the 20th century.... Read more... |
Anderszewski, CBSO, Wellber, Symphony Hall Birmingham review - grandeur in restraintWednesday, 11 March 2020
No orchestra wants its conductor to cancel in the week of a concert. Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla’s illness was announced only on Monday, but even in ideal conditions, if you needed to find a last minute replacement maestro for a programme of Bartók and... Read more... |
