France
The Musketeers, BBC OneSunday, 19 January 2014
It’s costume drama meets adventure story, it’s got smouldering manhood and heaving-bosomed women with sex, swordfights, politicking and even beautifully lit Prague doubling for 17th-century Paris, but the question hanging over the BBC’s lavish new... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Rennes: 35th Trans Musicales FestivalTuesday, 17 December 2013
White noise saturates the air. At mind-melting volume, it shifts through the aural spectrum to settle on the bass end. A voice begins yelling angry-sounding gobbets. The words are unintelligible. The stage is in darkness. Gradually, it becomes... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: German Measles, Mobilisation GénéraleSunday, 15 December 2013
Various Artists: German Measles Vol 1 – Flames of Love / German Measles Vol 2 – Sun Came Out at SevenFor the years between The Beatles inventing themselves in the clubs of Hamburg and the evolution of what was dubbed Krautrock, Germany’s... Read more... |
Henry V, Noel Coward TheatreWednesday, 04 December 2013
It has been a hard slog, but he's emerging victorious in the end. Essentially, Shakespeare's Henry V tracks a military campaign. In Act One, the eponymous king declares war on France. By Act Five, against the odds, he has won and is sealing an... Read more... |
Jeune et JolieThursday, 28 November 2013
You wait ages for a French film about a teenage girl's sexual awakening and then two come along at once. Actually who am I kidding? As any filmic Francophile will tell you it's not exactly a rarity. Still, red-hot on the heels of the astonishing... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Dunkirk: The spirit of FRACWednesday, 27 November 2013
Those French and their grand projects! Not the least of them is the division of the country into 23 areas who acquire their own collections of international contemporary art, supplemented by a national loan collection, all under the rubric of FRAC,... Read more... |
CD: Juliette Gréco – Gréco Chante BrelMonday, 25 November 2013
The songs of Jacques Brel and Juliette Gréco are old friends. She has revisited them many times since she began performing with Brel’s former accompanist, the pianist Gérard Jouannest, in 1968. Brel and Jouannest had worked together since 1958.... Read more... |
Anne Sofie von Otter, Milton CourtSunday, 24 November 2013
There’s nowt so French as the mélodie and the chanson, but I’m not convinced they make ideal bedfellows. Nor, I suspect, is Anne Sofie von Otter, since she split the salon and cabaret halves of her Douce France recital with an interval (and the CD... Read more... |
Blue Is the Warmest ColourWednesday, 20 November 2013
“The most potent special effect in movies is the human face changing its mind.” So stated film critic David Thomson, and the principle has never been more irrefutably proven than by Blue Is the Warmest Colour and its leading lady Adèle Exarchopoulos... Read more... |
DVD: ClochemerleTuesday, 19 November 2013
Clochemerle is the very odd one out in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s scriptwriting career. It was their only adaptation, from Gabriel Chevallier’s 1934 comic novel set in the titular Beaujolais small town a decade before, and their only step away... Read more... |
La Damnation de Faust, LSO, Gergiev, BarbicanMonday, 04 November 2013
Berlioz wanted to make the first arrival of his demon onstage unforgettable, with an extreme sound effect - violins and violas marked sul ponticello, strettissimo, starting fortissimo, with interjections from three trombones snarling in minor... Read more... |
The Male Nude, Wallace CollectionWednesday, 30 October 2013
It is amazing how perceptions and attitudes change. Think of a nude and the chances are you will imagine a naked woman since, nowadays, the female body virtually monopolises the genre; naked men scarcely make an appearance in mainstream culture.... Read more... |
