Arts Reviews

The death on Saturday of the musician, humorist and mathematician Tom Lehrer at the impressive age of 97 brings a near-end to a great American tradition of edgy, sometimes almost-unsayable satire amongst a postwar generation of New York’s Jews. Only Mel Brooks and Woody Allen are still carrying the torch, and neither of them are young men. Still, for all of their impressive achievements, it is hard to equal Lehrer’s unfathomable genius at his peak. Equally stunning is the realization that this peak only spanned around a decade: he recorded two studio albums in 1953 and 1959, and three live albums between 1959 and 1965. Yet the songs that he wrote remain extraordinary, giddy delights, combining tuneful arrangements with “did-he-really-say-that?” lyrics.

David Letterman, who by now has retreated into full comedy-hermit mode, posted a bunch of old Late Show clips on his YouTube page on Monday, where he continually and brutally spit-roasted CBS. In honor of CBS losing NFL coverage to FOX in 1994 (and selling off several affiliates in the bargain), he ran a “Top Ten List” of “New CBS Slogans,” including “you can’t spell ‘Bumbling Executives without C-B-S!’ and ‘If you bring your talk show here, we’ll sell all your stations!’” As a reward for that long-ago roasting, CBS said nothing in response and kept Letterman’s highly profitable show on the air for more than two decades.

Very few of us, whether celebrities or mere mortals, manage to arrange the circumstances of our departure from this world in order to leave in a blaze of glory. Up until today, the only example I could think of was David Bowie, who died two days after his glorious final album, Blackstar, was released. But now he is joined in whatever Valhalla rock stars congregate in by none other than Black Sabbath’s Ozzy Osbourne, who has died at the age of 76. His death comes a mere two and a half weeks after his former band played their final gig in Villa Park in Birmingham, England, where the band hailed from. The concert, “Back to the Beginning,” saw Osbourne clearly in failing health, unable to stand or walk due to his Parkinson’s disease, and seated, appropriately enough, on a throne.

I preface this review by saying that – unless you are the greatest admirer of Lena Dunham or anyone in the (admittedly impressive) cast of her new Netflix series, Too Much – it is very easy to give this particular show a miss. It is a tedious, unfunny collection of clichés, strange American-centric perspectives on life in London, a charmless, Dunhamesque lead, a chemistry-free central pairing and guest appearances from her famous friends that seem somewhere between embarrassed and incongruous. Yet there are many worse shows on streaming services, most of which have not attracted anything like The Discourse that Too Much has thus far – and which, I am painfully aware, this article is contributing to. Why this? Why now?

It must feel pretty good to be Seth Rogen today. His Apple TV series The Studio –in which he stars as a beleaguered studio chief attempting to walk the fine line between commercial and artistic respectability – has been nominated for an impressive 23 Emmy awards. This ties the second season of The Bear (2023) for the most nominations for a comedy. Rogen himself could potentially win plaudits for writing, acting and directing, and the show itself looks like the one to beat in the category of best comedy series. The show’s opponents include The Bear – which ceased to be funny at least two seasons ago – as well as Hacks and Only Murders in the Building, both of which have had their moment in the sun.

A British film fan recently took to social media to share an unusual experience that had happened to her while visiting the Picturehouse cinema in central London. She was standing in the foyer, watching the trailer for the forthcoming superhero picture The Fantastic Four: First Steps, when she became aware of a middle-aged man standing next to her, enjoying the same preview. He then said, in apparent surprise, “Look! I’m in that!” She turned to him, expecting to see some character actor with a one-line role, and it was none other than Pedro Pascal: film and television star, self-appointed nemesis to J.K. Rowling and “the internet’s daddy.

When I’m first invited to a sojourn in Madrid to learn about the life and work of Francisco Goya and the conservation work of Factum Arte, I’m thrilled but also a little apprehensive. While art-themed travel is right up my street and I live a mere train trip from the Spanish capital, Goya’s work is known for being a little, well, dark – particularly during his later years. As a fan of the Botticellis of this world, spending a few days with the artist famous for his "black paintings" was not something I was sure I’d enjoy.  And yet, three days later, as I stand in front of Goya’s grave in La Ermita de San Antonio de la Florida, I find myself moved in a way I never could’ve anticipated.

The news that Pixar’s latest picture, the alien-contact family comedy Elio, has been an egregious flop at the American box office, grossing a mere $20.8 million on its opening weekend, has been greeted with both surprise and disappointment. Surprise, because Pixar has long been seen as the gold standard of contemporary animation, and disappointment, because its films are not supposed to flop. No fewer than 13 of their pictures are in the 50 highest-grossing animated films of all time roster, and nine have won Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, most recently 2020’s Soul. And if there had been rumors that the company was in trouble, these were apparently put to bed by the enormous, epochal success of Inside Out 2 last summer, which grossed $1.7 billion at the box office.

When I studied English literature at Oxford about two decades ago, the issue of tutor-student relations was a vexed one. On the one hand – so the reasoning went – students were adults, over the age of consent and entitled to make their own decision as to whether they wanted to indulge in sexual congress with the men and women responsible for inculcating a knowledge and, hopefully, love of their subject into them. On the other, there were clear – although sometimes blurred – conflicts of interest relating to these invariably older figures also on occasion being responsible for marking their favored students’ examinations.

In a largely patchy summer for blockbusters – the excellent 28 Years Later aside – Joseph Kosinki’s F1 stands out for two distinct reasons. The film has arrived at an interesting time for the sport, which is finding increased popularity in the United States among demographic groups that previously may have ignored it – such as younger women – due to the success of the Netflix show Drive to Survive, accordingly name-checked in the movie. That show gives a behind-the-scenes look at Formula One racing and is now onto its seventh series.

Was anyone out there desperate for a third instalment of the 28 Days Later series? It has been nearly two decades since 28 Weeks Later. Many who were once thrilled to the adventures of hapless humans attempting to dodge the ravages of surprisingly fast-moving zombies have moved onto other genre fare, not least The Last of Us. However, the astonishingly visceral trailers for 28 Years Later, soundtracked by a vintage audio recording of Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘Boots’, were some of the most compelling and attention-grabbing trailers ever made. So does the film live up to its advertisements? Thankfully, it does.

So, in the end, it wasn’t so much Oh, Mary! as it was Not Tonight, Mary! Cole Escola’s out-there, queer-as-they-come farce, revolving around the strained relationship between the “foul and hateful” Mary Lincoln, a dipsomaniac with ambitions to be a cabaret singer, and honest Abe, here presented as a pitiful figure so deep in the closet he may as well be in Narnia, was widely regarded as the play to beat at this year’s Tonys. There hasn’t been an out-and-out comedy that’s won the major awards for a considerable time, let alone one that emerged from off-Broadway, and it’s testament to Escola’s prowess (as well as some of the most laudatory reviews in recent memory), that it was front-runner for Best Play.