France
Cézanne Portraits, National Portrait Gallery review - eye-opening and heart-breakingMonday, 30 October 2017
Some 50 portraits by Paul Cézanne – almost a third of all those the artist painted that have survived – are on view in this quietly sensational exhibition. Eye-opening and heart-breaking, it examines his art exclusively in the context of his... Read more... |
Marcel Proust: Letters to the Lady Upstairs - a very slim volumeSunday, 29 October 2017
Marcel Proust was a prolific letter-writer. He wrote tens of thousands of them, and at speed, as can be seen from the two facsimiles which are included with the text of Letters to the Lady Upstairs (there are quite a few more in the original French... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Frantz Fanon - Black Face White MaskFriday, 27 October 2017
The much-respected visual artist Isaac Julien made his name as one of the first great black British filmmakers, not least with Looking for Langston (1989) and Young Soul Rebels (1991). While Steve McQueen moved from gallery art and installations to... Read more... |
Loving Vincent review - Van Gogh biopic of sorts lacks language to match its visualsFriday, 13 October 2017
Loving Vincent was clearly a labour of love for all concerned, so I hope it doesn't seem churlish to wish that a Van Gogh biopic some seven or more years in the planning had spent more time at the drawing board. By that I don't mean yet further... Read more... |
LFF 2017: Blade of the Immortal / Redoubtable - Samurai slasher versus the Nouvelle VagueThursday, 12 October 2017
This is the 100th feature film by Takashi Miike, Japan’s fabled maestro of sex, horror and ultra-violent Yakuza flicks, and here he has found his subject in Hiroake Samura’s Blade of the Immortal manga comics. Manji (Takuya Kimura) is a veteran... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Guy Johnston, Joyce El-Khoury, Michael Spyres, The ChanteuseSaturday, 07 October 2017
Guy Johnston: Tecchler’s Cello - From Cambridge to Rome (King’s College Cambridge)Acquiring a second-hand instrument always leads one to wonder what sort of a life it led before. Did said instrument enjoy a flourishing professional career, or was it... Read more... |
CD: Carla Bruni - French TouchMonday, 02 October 2017
Carla Bruni delivers smooth and sophisticated pop. She undoubtedly has plenty of talent, and this latest collection of songs – all of them covers, and sung in impressive English – reeks of good taste, careful artistic choices and a wide knowledge of... Read more... |
Claire Tomalin: A Life of My Own review - the biographer on herselfSunday, 24 September 2017
The title says it all, or at least quite a lot. Luminously intelligent, an exceptionally hard worker, bilingual in French, a gifted biographer, Claire Tomalin has been at the heart of the literati glitterati all her working life. Here she turns her... Read more... |
Senza Sangue/Bluebeard's Castle, Hackney Empire - uneven French-Hungarian mixWednesday, 20 September 2017
Has Hackney ever seen or heard such a spectacle – a full Hungarian orchestra taking up most of the Empire stalls to complete the semi-circle of a relatively empty stage? And did enough of London get to hear about it? I certainly wouldn’t have done... Read more... |
Extract: Peter Brook - Tip of the Tongue: Reflections on Language and MeaningSunday, 10 September 2017
A long time ago when I was very young, a voice hidden deep within me whispered, "Don’t take anything for granted. Go and see for yourself." This little nagging murmur has led me to so many journeys, so many explorations, trying to live together... Read more... |
The 'self-experimenter': Howard Brenton on Strindberg in crisisMonday, 04 September 2017
I wrote The Blinding Light to try to understand the mental and spiritual crisis that August Strindberg suffered in February 1896. Deeply disturbed, plagued by hallucinations, he holed up in various hotel rooms in Paris, most famously in the Hotel... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Love of a WomanFriday, 01 September 2017
In Jean Grémillon's final fiction film The Love of a Woman, Marie Prieur (Micheline Presle) arrives on the Breton island of Ushant to replace the tiny settlement's aging Dr Morel (Robert Naly). While showing Marie her new digs and surgery, Mme Morel... Read more... |
