Live broadcasts into cinemas have become something of a commonplace, and a welcome one: operas, theatre performances, even radio programmes. But a live broadcast into cinemas of the audience entering another cinema is a new one on me. The idea is part of this year’s BFI London Film Festival, not as an avant-garde experiment but
‘Women spend more money on their ears in pearl earrings than on any other part of their person.’ So said Pliny the Elder, who disapproved of the increasing fashion for pearls in the 1st century. It’s lucky he’s not around now to see the V&A’s new exhibition Pearls (until 19 January), where there are natural,
Superstar Carlos Acosta makes little or no reference to Don Quixote’s established history in his programme note about the genesis of his new ballet. As a dancer hailing from Cuba, he is certainly familiar with the work’s performance tradition, but a greater historical awareness would probably have helped Acosta rethink his realistic approach to the
Britain is still an essentially Victorian country (see Daily Mail for details). So it’s no surprise that we keep returning to the period for inspiration. Victoriana: The Art of Revival at the Guildhall Art Gallery (until 8 December) is a collection of modern pieces channelling the age when corsets were tighter than George Osborne’s purse
Of all folk memories the Blitz remains one of the most enduring. In the autumn of 1940 the Luftwaffe strafed London on 57 consecutive nights, leaving (if that is the word) 20,000 dead and whole streets pounded to rubble. ‘You do your worst,’ Churchill told the Hun, ‘and we shall do our best.’ Noël Coward
So, there’s this guy called Bob Dylan and, across just seven years in the 1960s, he’d released nine albums that were already legendary. The Times They Are a-Changin’, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde… yeah, you know them all. But then, at the start of the 1970s, came his Self Portrait. With a title like
The most paranoid of presidents, Richard Nixon must have been feeling unwell when he allowed three of his closest aides to shoot personal Super 8 footage of their time in the White House. Bob Haldeman, John Erlichman and Dwight Chapin — all of whom later went to prison for their involvement in the Watergate affair
Venice may be the oldest film festival in the world but it is still breaking new ground. This week film-lovers across the globe will sit down in the comfort of their own homes to watch films that are being streamed live from the Lido. It is the second year of Venice’s Web Theatre; this offers
Whoever coined the phrase ‘nothing is ever black and white’ had quite obviously never stepped over the threshold of Tate Britain this summer. Another London (until 16 September), a selection of photographs taken by some of the 20th century’s most celebrated photographers, including Henri Cartier-Bresson and Irving Penn, is a two-tone world; a black and
Martha Wainwright was keeping it in the family at the Union Chapel in Islington last week. Arcangelo, the singer-songwriter’s three-year-old son, joined her on stage and had the audience eating out of the palm of his tiny hand; the spectral presence of her mother, the folk legend Kate McGarrigle, was never far away; and the
Jewels is everything a George Balanchine admirer could ask for. The sumptuous triptych, set to scores by Fauré, Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky, is a compendium of what Balanchine’s style is about; each part — Emeralds, Rubies and Diamonds — provides unique insights into the subtleties, signature features and inventiveness that inform the art of the Russian
Brother, can you spare me a train? Or maybe just a Pullman carriage or two? There are so many brilliant films set on trains that I’d love to screen some of them in loco locomotive, as it were. Shanghai Express (1932), The Lady Vanishes (1938), The Narrow Margin (1950), Night Train (1959)… I’ll stop there.
Send George Osborne to the Tower, then he might learn that currency manipulation rarely ends well. Coins and Kings occupies four small rooms in a Yeoman Warder’s house on the site of the old mint, which was established by Edward I in the 1270s in response to endemic counterfeiting, coin clipping and general skulduggery. This
Tradition is often frowned on. Yet, if properly handled, it can be sheer fun and pure bliss, as demonstrated by the Bolshoi Ballet’s current season in London. Far from being museum pieces, the classics so far presented stand out for their vibrant and captivating theatricality. According to an enlightening note by Yuri Grigorovich, the father
Standing enthusiastically by as a naked man writhes in agony might not be everyone’s cup of tea. But this is the sort of bizarre spectacle that devotees of immersive theatre group Punchdrunk sign up for. Like previous efforts including 2007’s The Masque of the Red Death, Punchdrunk’s latest venture, The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable,
A rare jewel sits in the middle of the Hyde Park Corner roundabout. The Quadrant Gallery, run by English Heritage, occupies the Wellington Arch. The gallery is showing a series of exhibitions to mark the centenary of the 1913 Ancient Monuments Act, a landmark in conservation. The present show (until 15 September) examines efforts to
‘Lounge suit’ is normally a reliable signifier of supine gentility. But there it was on the invitation to Richard Rogers’s 80th birthday retrospective. Can this be the same architect once praised by a president of RIBA for his admirable ‘sod you’ approach to the public? The same man the Parisians sniffily called an ‘English hippie’
Shaftesbury Avenue might not be traditional bear-hunting territory, but young adventure-seekers would be well advised to beat a path this summer holidays to the Lyric Theatre where Michael Rosen’s much-loved classic We’re Going on a Bear Hunt has been imaginatively translated to the stage by Sally Cookson (until 8 September). The story follows an intrepid
Tapestries once had a place of honour in fine art, but that was during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Oil paintings, for a time, were viewed as the poor man’s tapestry. Now, that equation may be turning round. ‘Tapestries serve a lot of purposes,’ said Donald Farnsworth, president of Magnolia Editions, which has produced
Those who lament sluggishness in contemporary stagings of Balanchine’s ballets — and those who are responsible for it — should have seen and learnt from Boston Ballet last week. Forget the funereal tempi we, in the old world, are forced to accept because of the killjoy aesthetics favoured by artistically challenged ballet directors and teachers.