Culture

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 15, Nationwide The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 is a remake of the 1974 film which starred Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw — remember the ending; the sneeze and the gesundheit? — and I don’t know how this remake got off the ground exactly, but I’m imagining the initial meeting went something like this: Film Executive #1: ‘Let’s remake The Taking of Pelham One Two Three but do it dumber.’ Film Executive #2: ‘How much dumber?’ Film Executive #1: ‘Much, much dumber. And we’ll finish with an armed face-off instead of a sneeze. You can’t get less clever than that.’ Film Executive #2: ‘Great! I love it!

Lord knows there's almost no idea too dumb to appear in a newspaper, but this recent effort from the New York Times is a cracker: Does Hogwarts have a drinking problem? As Harry Potter fans crowd movie theaters to catch the latest installment in the blockbuster series, parents may be surprised by the starring role given to alcohol. In scene after scene, the young wizards and their adult professors are seen sipping, gulping and pouring various forms of alcohol to calm their nerves, fortify their courage or comfort their sorrows...recreated on the big screen, the images of teenage drinking are jarring. Previous Harry Potter movies have shown drinking, but this one takes it to a new level.

British Self-Portraits in the 20th Century: The Ruth Borchard Collection Kings Place Gallery, 90 York Way, N1, until 29 August This makes self-portraits fascinating documents but not always easy to live with. Self-communing can be a very private matter, and if the artist has used the painting to exorcise devils, the results can be deeply disturbing. Nevertheless, Ruth Borchard (1910–2000), a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, decided to concentrate her collecting entirely on the self-portrait, citing the fact that her taste in literature was introspective and confessional — towards diaries, letters and autobiographies — and that she should collect paintings on a similar theme.

Felicity, pleasure, happiness, luxe, calme et volupté. Felicity, pleasure, happiness, luxe, calme et volupté. Perfection: the blissful rightness of every note; a peach, or a rose, caught at the exact moment of poise between not-quite and slightly-past. Such thoughts are set off by a recent chance re-encounter with Debussy’s cantata setting a French translation of D-G. Rossetti’s ‘Blessed Damozel’. It’s one of two complementary gems poised upon the edge of maturity while retaining the flush of youth. The Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune is played every day; La Damoiselle élue is sadly neglected.

Corot to Monet National Gallery, until 20 September In the basement of the Sainsbury Wing is a free exhibition of paintings subtitled ‘A Fresh Look at Landscape from the Collection’. I always enjoy the rehanging of old favourites in new combinations because it not only reminds us of why we liked them in the first place but often allows us to see them in a new light, too. Different paintings hung together can arouse unaccustomed resonances, but it has to be done well, or the eye can be overwhelmed and the intended effects spoiled. Although this show contains many fine things, it projects a feeling of clutter, an air of academic overkill. I wanted to enjoy it more than I did, but with over 90 exhibits there were simply too many pictures.

Michael Henderson has been to 100 operas by Wagner. He wasn’t always an admirer of the music When sceptics ask how I ‘found’ the music dramas of Richard Wagner there is an obvious, contrary answer: I didn’t; he found me. As a young music-lover I was certainly no Wagnerian in the making. Although I had always had a love of the orchestra, and slipped easily into the initially perplexing world of opera, I had little knowledge of Wagner, and no desire to find out. If anything I felt hostile. A master at prep school had entertained some of us 12-year-olds one Sunday afternoon, and popped on an LP called, improbably, Wagner’s Greatest Hits. One day, he counselled, as we tittered, we would grow out of pop, and open our ears to other kinds of music.

Richard Long: Heaven and Earth Tate Britain, until 6 September The title of this exhibition may not be exactly modest, but then there is a god-like aspect to all artistic creativity, particularly when it operates in the domain of Land Art. Some practitioners of this genre have literally made the earth move in their excavations and reshapings of nature, others keep their human interventions to a minimum. Richard Long (born 1945) is one of the latter, confining his activities principally to walking and to making tracks in the wild, or leaving behind him cairns of stones.

Do we really have any idea of how serious this is about to become? As I sat watching BBC 2's recesion drama Freefall tonight I realsied that we are beginning to get an inkling. This was a quick-hit drama intended as an immediate response to the recession and it was very rough at the edges, but it showed how quickly the culture has grasped that this getting very grim indeed. It was a conventional enough story of an aspirational family wanting to move to a new private housing estate, but it sent a chill through these bones. There was a fascinating set of statistics in Nick Cohen's Observer column this weekend, which should send a chill through everyone's bones.

Henrietta Bredin talks to Ruth Wilson about her role as Stella in the Donmar’s Streetcar If Ruth Wilson doesn’t very soon become a major force to be reckoned with, as an actress, director, producer, screenwriter (probably all four), I’ll eat my entire, quite extensive collection of hats. She is bursting with talent and possesses a gleefully voracious appetite for a challenge. This is probably just as well as she is about to take on the role of Stella at the Donmar Warehouse in Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. ‘I love Stella,’ she says, leaning back in her chair and gulping a mug of tea. ‘I think she’s quite an opportunist, very modern and forward-thinking.

There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession. There’s a run of fine shows among the commercial galleries at the moment: perhaps they’re gearing up for the August recess, or simply facing out the recession. Whichever, there’s plenty to see, and a good place to start is with Browse & Darby’s 33rd annual exhibition (19 Cork Street, W1, until 24 July), a mixed summer show guaranteed to spring some surprises among the expected masters.