Arts Reviews

The story of the president and the porn star has been, in the last week, a fast-moving one

We were so close to getting rid of Jann Wenner. When his 51 per cent stake in Rolling Stone was put up for sale last year, it felt safe to assume that the new owners would gently ease out the man whose disastrous recent leadership brought the publication to the point where it needed to … Read more

You would have to be quite odd not to approve of the sudden surge of solidarity amongst Hollywood stars of the female persuasion. (Though I did wonder, when Frances McDormand called so movingly during her Oscar-winner speech ‘Meryl, if you do it everyone else will!’ whether she meant ‘Suck up to Weinstein for years’ or … Read more

You Were Never Really Here is a fourth feature from Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar, We Need to Talk About Kevin) and the first thing to say is that it is exceptionally violent. I don’t say this disapprovingly but if your threshold for violence is as low as mine — I incurred a paper cut … Read more

Reading the lip-smacking reports of the latest troubled celebrity relationships  (Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux definitely high and dry, Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne allegedly on the rocks) I couldn’t help musing that stars – and more specifically, the place they occupy in our mass psychological landscape – have very much changed since the first … Read more

Ah, this will be about empire. So I thought when I saw that the small city of Arcata, California, has voted to remove the statue on their town plaza of President William McKinley. The United States had never possessed overseas colonies before McKinley. Every territory we acquired, we eventually brought into the republic with full … Read more

The wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry has no precedent in the history of the Royal family. How will a relatively ordinary person, albeit a celebrity, cope with the rigid etiquette and stifling sense of entitlement of the culture into which they are marrying? I’m referring, of course, to Harry. From the moment he … Read more

Tomorrow night, TV viewers will take to their couches for a night of Hollywood glamour, razzmatazz and gross hypocrisy. A bunch of vain halfwits who make millions waving guns around or taking off their clothes will preach to us about gun control and sexual morality. Yes, it’s the 493rd annual Oscar Awards. I have the … Read more

A couple of months ago, I moved to the capital of the United States. I had one year of university left and applied for a fellowship (in journalism) in my final term which parachuted me into the world of Washington D.C. The view from my bedroom window is now the distant Capitol Building and the … Read more

Bruce Springsteen promised that he was ‘Born To Run’, and now, like Judy Garland and Ethel Merman before him, he is running on Broadway—and running, and running. From last October to early February, the workingman’s tribune performed five nights a week at the Walter Kerr Theatre, his tools a piano, an acoustic guitar, and a … Read more

The film I, Tonya, has been well-received and is even up for an Oscar or two. I’m pleased about that because I’ve met Tonya Harding and her story has always fascinated me, not least because to watch her skate in the run up to the 1994 Olympics (particularly in Oakland, California in 1991 at the … Read more

As a British woman, I love Americans’ kindness, generosity and energy but am often thrown by their exaggerated politeness and euphemistic speech. They use ‘passed’ for ‘died’ and always say ‘excuse me’ if they brush against you in a shop. They sentimentally refer to ‘your puppy’ when the dog is patently over three years old. … Read more

Lady Bird is a semi-autobiographical film written and directed by Greta Gerwig with a plot synopsis that need not detain us as it is basically only this: girl has a mum. (Or: girl has a mum, and sometimes they row and sometimes they don’t.) But thus far it has won near universal critical praise, two … Read more

‘Hi, it’s Jonas.’ When the great tenor rings from Vienna, I ask if there are any topics he wants me to avoid, such are his minders’ anxieties. ‘Ask anything,’ laughs Jonas. ‘I’m not shy.’ He is heading in from the airport to see a physio — ‘these concerts, you have to stand there all the … Read more

There’s fear and loathing out there and a whole new moral climate with new rules