America
Album: Lana Del Rey - Blue BanistersFriday, 22 October 2021
Lana Del Rey’s eighth album would tell her story “and pretty much nothing else”, she teased, as her planned, near instant follow-up to Chemtrails Over the Country Club slipped back from spring to autumn. Del Rey has often claimed autobiography at... Read more... |
Album: Young Thug - PunkMonday, 18 October 2021
From underground curiosity to cult icon, now label head and superstar, Atlanta’s Young Thug has continued to reinvent himself, as well as rap at large, for the better part of a decade. After being announced over two years ago, his new album Punk is... Read more... |
White Noise, Bridge Theatre review - provocative if not always plausibleFriday, 15 October 2021
"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark many a restless night in playgoers who are prepared to take its numerous provocations on board. To do so requires various... Read more... |
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads review - can goodness ever be its own reward?Monday, 11 October 2021
It’s Christmas 1971 in New Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, and pastor Russ Hildebrandt has plans for time alone with Frances, an attractive young widow who’s just moved back into town.Important facts become quickly apparent: Russ resents his long-... Read more... |
Yoko Ono, Mend Piece, Whitechapel Gallery review – funny and sad in equal measureThursday, 07 October 2021
Its more than 50 years since Yoko Ono first presented Mend Piece at the Indica Gallery, London in the exhibition through which she met John Lennon. The piece is currently being revisited at the Whitechapel Gallery and, in the intervening years, its... Read more... |
Theaster Gates - A Clay Sermon, Whitechapel Gallery review - mud, mud, glorious mudTuesday, 05 October 2021
Last year a stoneware jar by David Drake sold at auction for $1.3 million. It fetched this extraordinary price because of its history: Drake was a slave on a plantation in South Carolina who not only made fabulous pots, but dared sign and date them... Read more... |
The Normal Heart, National Theatre review - Ben Daniels triumphantMonday, 04 October 2021
Hypocrisy. Is this the right word? I don’t mean the play, but the audience. Of course, in the middle of the current COVID 19 crisis, there’s bound to be a certain amount of discomfort when watching Larry Kramer’s 1985 modern activist classic about... Read more... |
Isamu Noguchi, Barbican review – the most elegant exhibition in townFriday, 01 October 2021
Isamu Noguchi may not be a household name, yet one strand of his work is incredibly familiar. In 1951 he visited a lamp factory in Gifu, a Japanese city famous for its paper lanterns. This prompted him to design the lampshades that, for decades,... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Johnny GuitarTuesday, 28 September 2021
Watching this restored print of Nicholas Ray’s delirious Western reminded me of the discovery that those pristine white statues of the Ancient World had once been painted in gaudy colours. When I first saw Johnny Guitar, it was one of those movies... Read more... |
Oliver Sacks: His Own Life review - a complex portrait of a complex manMonday, 27 September 2021
It’s well worth tracking down one of the September 29 special cinema screenings of Ric Burns' lovingly made documentary portrait of the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, or seeking it out online. Famous for his vivid, insightful descriptions of... Read more... |
Camp Siegfried, Old Vic review - the banality of evil, brilliantly served upTuesday, 21 September 2021
A stealthily powerful play gets the production of its dreams in Camp Siegfried, which marks a high-profile UK presence for the American writer Bess Wohl. A world premiere at the Old Vic, Wohl's two-hander shines a scary and pertinent light on a Nazi... Read more... |
The Starling, Netflix review - a slender idea unsatisfyingly executedFriday, 17 September 2021
Despite an alluring cast which includes Melissa McCarthy, Chris O’Dowd and Kevin Kline, The Starling is doomed to be remembered, if at all, as a slender idea unsatisfyingly executed. Directed by Theodore Melfi from a screenplay by Matt Harris, it’s... Read more... |
