1950s
Reissue CDs Weekly: Sun RecordsSunday, 12 May 2013
Various Artists: The Sun Rock Box - Rock ‘n’ Roll Recorded by Sam Phillips 1954-1959It’s no exaggeration to say that Sam Phillips transformed society. With his associate Ike Turner, he brought Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” to the world in 1951... Read more... |
Lamsma, BBCSO, Brabbins, Barbican Hall/ Mei Yi Foo, Kings PlaceSaturday, 20 April 2013
Brave old world, that has so much unheard music in it. Not exactly the words of Shakespeare’s Miranda, I know, but that’s how I feel having experienced great things in the concert hall for the first time recently: Tippett’s Second Symphony from... Read more... |
DVD: CapturedFriday, 12 April 2013
While it’s impossible to know the effect of Captured on the few who originally saw it, you can be damn sure it packed a punch. It still does. This unforgettable film was made in 1959 for the Army Kinema Corporation to train personnel in resisting... Read more... |
The Thrill of Love, St James TheatreThursday, 04 April 2013
Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Britain, is a cultural icon, the image of the peroxide blonde who spells big trouble. An influence on Diana Dors in the 1956 film Yield to the Night, she was played by Miranda Richardson in Dance with a... Read more... |
DVD: The MasterFriday, 08 March 2013
The Master is one of several remarkably challenging epics which have somehow been financed in 21st-century Hollywood. Like Tree of Life, Synecdoche New York (also starring Philip Seymour Hoffman) and There Will Be Blood (also written and directed by... Read more... |
Farewell Kenny Ball, 1930-2013Thursday, 07 March 2013
The death today at age 82 of trumpeter Kenny Ball makes him the first of the big three chart regulars of Britain’s trad jazz boom to pass away. Both Acker Bilk and Chris Barber are still with us. It’s easily forgotten, but trad actually was bigger... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Conny Plank, Pied Piper, Jean-Luc Ponty, Cliff RichardSunday, 10 February 2013
Various Artists: Who’s That Man – A Tribute to Conny PlankThe list of acts Konrad Plank worked with is a Hollywood Walk of Fame of Krautrock. As an engineer or producer he was behind seminal albums by Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia, La Düsseldorf and... Read more... |
Montgomery Clift: The Right ProfileMonday, 04 February 2013
Both on screen and off, Montgomery Clift was sensitive, hesitant, introspective, self-destructive and often tortured. A personality that expressed itself on film as if afraid of what the camera would reveal. There were at least three faces of Clift... Read more... |
Feast, Young VicSaturday, 02 February 2013
Feast aims high. Very, very high. Steered by experienced and much-lauded director Rufus Norris, five playwrights and one choreographer seek to make a fusion of physical theatre, dance, onstage music, straight drama, abstract poetic dialogue,... Read more... |
Call The Midwife, Series Two, BBC OneMonday, 21 January 2013
I somehow avoided the period medical drama phenomenon that Call the Midwife became in its first series until the Christmas special. As befits the holiday season its storyline was trite, focusing on a teenage mother who miraculously managed to single... Read more... |
DVD: The Titfield ThunderboltTuesday, 15 January 2013
Like the Will Hay classic Oh! Mr. Porter and the droll BBC miniseries Love on a Branch Line, Charles Crichton’s 1953 Ealing comedy, the first shot in Technicolor, celebrates the English love of rural railways run by unworldly eccentrics in... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Broadcast, João Gilberto, James, Here Comes the HurtSunday, 06 January 2013
Broadcast: Berberian Sound Studio Original SoundtrackMore than the soundtrack to one of last year's most impactful films, the release of the music for Berberian Sound Studio is a tribute to the memory of Trish Keenan. With her Broadcast... Read more... |
