America
Taboo, BBC OneSunday, 08 January 2017
The arrival of this oppressively atmospheric 19th-century historical drama is being trailed as the BBC's bold attempt to break the Saturday night stranglehold of soaps and talent shows. No doubt they were encouraged by the success of all those... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Hell or High WaterFriday, 06 January 2017
In American mythology, the frontier offered a clean slate, the opportunity to escape from the shadow of the past and live heroically. But, as with everything else in the context of the American Dream, which continues to unfold in real life as if it... Read more... |
Albums of the Year: Leonard Cohen - You Want It DarkerThursday, 05 January 2017
Popular music works best when it strikes a chord that goes beyond the beauty of the hook, the seductive quality of the melody, or the catchiness of the lyrics. The resonance can be personal or universal, or perhaps, in order to qualify as a critic’s... Read more... |
Bruce Springsteen: In His Own Words, Channel 4Friday, 30 December 2016
A 90-minute biographical documentary about Bruce Springsteen, you may think, is for Springsteen fans only. But really anyone who is interested in fame, friendship, family relationships and the creative process will have enjoyed this – a revealing... Read more... |
Crash and BurnThursday, 29 December 2016
Not all racing drivers are created equal. New world champion Nico Rosberg is the son of a former F1 champion, grew up in Monaco, speaks five languages and turned down an offer to study aeronautical engineering at Imperial College, London.On the... Read more... |
Westworld, Series 1 Finale, Sky AtlanticMonday, 12 December 2016
Anyone who expected a simple robots-versus-humans confrontation, like in Michael Crichton's original Westworld movie from 1973, had another think, or bunch of thinks, coming. The final episode of the Jonathan Nolan/JJ Abrams Westworld was more like... Read more... |
Planet Earth II: Cities, BBC OneMonday, 12 December 2016
Cities, the fastest growing habitats in the history of the world, provided the subject for the sixth and final programme in Planet Earth II, the series that came a decade after the original Planet Earth programmes set new standards for television... Read more... |
Robert Rauschenberg, Tate ModernThursday, 08 December 2016
The Good American, a Texan no less, has landed at Tate Modern in style. This posthumous retrospective of the great Robert Rauschenberg includes a paint-bespattered, fully made-up bed hung vertically on the wall, and called – you guessed – Bed,1955 (... Read more... |
This Is Us, Channel 4Wednesday, 07 December 2016
Any show that starts with a shot of a naked bubble-butt is likely to grab the attention – especially when it belongs to Milo Ventimiglia – but, alas, the barefaced cheek of this opening gambit becomes all too symbolic. This Is Us scrapes the... Read more... |
The Birth of a NationTuesday, 06 December 2016
DW Griffiths's 1915 silent epic, The Birth of a Nation, became notorious for its pejorative portrayal of black people and its heroic vision of the Ku Klux Klan. For his directorial debut, Nate Parker has appropriated Griffiths's title and whipped it... Read more... |
El Niño, LSO, Adams, BarbicanMonday, 05 December 2016
Second and third times lucky: after the migraine-inducing multimedia overload of Peter Sellars's premiere production of El Niño, first seen in London in 2003 and subsequently excoriated in eloquent prose by the composer himself, John Adams's layered... Read more... |
SnowdenMonday, 05 December 2016
As an old Sixties lefty brought up on paranoia-infused thrillers like The Parallax View or All the President's Men, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American conspiracies. However, in contrast to his earlier labyrinthine epics Nixon and JFK,... Read more... |
