France
The Normans, BBC TwoThursday, 05 August 2010
My surname came to Britain with the Normans, and I must say that my forebears have had a bad press in their adopted homeland. From Hereward the Wake to Robin Hood, Anglo-Saxon legends have depicted us as despotic and cruel, whereas we were great... Read more... |
Serge Gainsbourg vs The Anglo-SaxonsWednesday, 28 July 2010
The arrival of Gainsbourg: Vie Héroique in British cinemas this week – under its Anglo-Saxon title Gainsbourg – assumes that distributors think there’s an audience. Even so, Gainsbourg hardly has the appeal of a Johnny Cash biopic. Or even an Ike... Read more... |
GainsbourgSunday, 25 July 2010
Serge Gainsbourg, like Charles Bukowski, is one of those blokes who should be banned as a role model for impressionable young men, who may start imagining they too can behave like disgusting old soaks and pull any gorgeous bird who comes into their... Read more... |
Coppélia, Bolshoi Ballet, Royal Opera HouseThursday, 22 July 2010
Coppélia is the name of the doll in the ballet-comedy - not that of the heroine, who is a bad pixie named Swanilda, a girl of youthful capriciousness but a heart of gold. What you hope for when you go to see this usually rather quaint 19th-century... Read more... |
BluebeardSaturday, 17 July 2010
Sex, blood and shocking - these are the things Catherine Breillat does well. So long as she's busting taboos wide open you can forgive her the longueurs, the wilful refusal to attend to fundamental principles of storytelling, her characters'... Read more... |
Aspects of Love, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 15 July 2010
The Menier Chocolate Factory could scarcely be on mightier form, or so it seems, punching far beyond its weight as a small, out-of-the-way south London playhouse that is nonetheless responsible at the moment for five commercial transfers between... Read more... |
New pavilion gets you hot under the collarTuesday, 13 July 2010
The unveiling of the Serpentine Pavilion (now in its 10th year) has become as much of a summer fixture as Henley. And yet it is not without controversy. Why, for instance, does the Serpentine Gallery in London insist on commissioning global stars... Read more... |
Concorde’s Last Flight, Channel 4Monday, 12 July 2010
As an 11-year-old boy, I was awestruck from the first moment I saw Concorde on our three-channel black-and-white television, seemingly rearing up from its runway like a cyborg swan. At that age - and during that era - fact and fiction became... Read more... |
London RiverMonday, 12 July 2010
But the theme of not knowing is by no means confined to the agony of uncertainty. Brenda Blethyn plays Elizabeth, a mother who sees the 7/7 bombings on the news and instinctively picks up the phone to check, as millions of other parents will have on... Read more... |
La Bête, Comedy TheatreWednesday, 07 July 2010
Infamously, the first production of La Bête, David Hirson's literary satire set in 17th-century France and written in rhyming couplets, closed in New York after only 25 performances. No such bleak fate is likely to attend this London (and Broadway-... Read more... |
LeavingWednesday, 07 July 2010
Kristin Scott Thomas possesses an altogether singular beauty: classical yet faintly wistful, intimidating at times but equally capable of enormous warmth. And because this English rose has professionally blossomed not just in the Anglo-American... Read more... |
Don Giovanni live from Aix, Ciné LumièreTuesday, 06 July 2010
With several replicas of Mozart's libertine stalking the country this summer, there had to be a good reason for seeking him out in the cinema. I had two. One was a curiosity to see how the TV channel Arte and the French Institute in South Kensington... Read more... |
