America
theartsdesk Q&A: jazz musician Charles LloydSaturday, 20 November 2021
Miles Davis stole Charles Lloyd’s band, and much else. It was Lloyd’s classic quartet with Keith Jarrett on piano, drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Cecil McBee, not Miles, who were the first jazz act to play San Francisco’s Fillmore and gain an... Read more... |
Dopesick, Disney+ review - the harrowing inside story of America's OxyContin scandalSaturday, 20 November 2021
“Drug companies are supposed to be honest,” says a lady from the Department of Justice, explaining why the US Food and Drug Administration had been treating the pharmaceutical industry with a light, indeed barely detectable, regulatory touch.... Read more... |
Balsom, Daniel, Poster, Britten Sinfonia, Stroman, Milton Court review – kinds of blueFriday, 19 November 2021
Where do you draw – how do you draw? – a credible line between jazz and “classical” music in 20th-century America? With the reliably boundary-busting Britten Sinfonia, trumpeter Alison Balsom mixed and matched works from different formal lineages in... Read more... |
Bruised review - Halle Berry takes the blows and does it her wayThursday, 18 November 2021
A classic specimen of the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” school, Bruised is Halle Berry’s directorial debut. It was back in 2002 that Berry won a Best Actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball, and Bruised suggests that, at 55, she may have found... Read more... |
Blu-ray: Sweet ThingTuesday, 09 November 2021
The independent filmmaker Alexandre Rockwell has flown under the radar since he made his name with the Cassavetes-vibed 1992 New York comedy In the Soup. He recently explained that his career was sabotaged by Harvey Weinstein, who was jealous,... Read more... |
Iliza Shlesinger, Eventim Apollo review - feminism, the internet - and brasFriday, 05 November 2021
Iliza Shlesinger is an American writer, performer and presenter whose film work includes roles in Pieces of a Woman and Good on Paper, the latter which she also wrote and produced. She's also an established stand-up comic, with five Netflix specials... Read more... |
'Night, Mother, Hampstead Theatre review - despair in sotto-voceTuesday, 02 November 2021
‘Night, Mother remains a play of piercing pessimism, something that’s not necessarily the same as tragedy, though the two often run congruently. The inexorability of the development of Marsha Norman’s 1983 Pulitzer Prize winner certainly recalls the... Read more... |
Invasion, Apple TV+ review - sci-fi epic or a pile of space junk?Tuesday, 26 October 2021
Conceived on a global scale to depict the enormity of an alien menace from outer space, Apple's new series Invasion has grand ambitions, but crash-lands like a pile of space junk. After a few hours of this, waiting for something to happen, you’ll be... Read more... |
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... |
