The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
At the risk of trivialising a tragic death, I have been musing over Heath Ledger’s now-posthumous performance as the Joker (see my earlier post as well as this article detailing the potential fate of Ledger's incomplete film projects) and the impact that death can have upon the reception of art, literature and entertainment. Here is my thumbnail list of posthumous precedents. There must be many, many others. Which would Coffee Housers add?
As this is the last week of my thirties, I feel entitled to indulge in a spot of pop culture nostalgia (or more than usual, at any rate). In tomorrow’s Spectator, I review Paul Morley’s masterly book on Joy Division, which I recommend to anyone who is interested in the music, ideas and social currents of the late Seventies and early Eighties. Looking back on three decades of writing about the Manchester band, Morley explains why the group, and the Factory records label pioneered by the late Tony Wilson, were so important in the history of rock and the redevelopment of the North. Absolutely terrific. And while I am at it, the DVD of last year’s Control is out soon and is similarly indispensable (even if you don’t care much for post-punk music).
“Why so serious?” say the teaser posters for the forthcoming Batman movie, The Dark Knight. This slogan acquired a bleak subtext last night when 28-year-old Heath Ledger – who plays the Joker in the new film – was found dead in his New York apartment, apparently as the result of a drug overdose (the autopsy is to be held today). As anyone who has seen Monster’s Ball or Brokeback Mountain can attest, Ledger was a hugely talented actor whose troubled private life seems to have overwhelmed him.
After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street 18, nationwide After the cheerlessness and brutality of No Country for Old Men, I’m not sure a film about a serial killer is just what you want. I may even be up to here with bloody films about bloodless people. Why not a nice film about nice people doing nice things, like crocheting for the poor? How hard can that be? True enough, Sweeney Todd is a musical, but this doesn’t exactly lighten the mood which, if you are as vigilant and smart as I am, you will spot right from the beginning when slicks of scarlet blood ooze from the opening credits. Hello, Dolly! Now that was a nice musical.
Rose Hilton: A Selected Retrospective Tate St Ives, until 11 May Rose Hilton was born Rosemary Phipps in the Kentish village of Leigh, near Tonbridge, in 1931. She grew up the dutiful daughter of parents who were strict Plymouth Brethren, but early on she showed distinct signs of artistic talent. Her parents considered that this might equip her as an art teacher, but Rose had higher ambitions: she determined to be a painter. Force of character combined with innate skills took her from Beckenham Art School to the Royal College of Art in London, where she won prizes and was praised by her tutor Carel Weight for her sense of colour.
Something I didn’t think was possible has happened this last week: I have been strongly moved by a performance of La traviata. That was due very largely, of course, to the way the title role was performed. Anna Netrebko may not have the perfect voice for the part, her vocal technique might be lacking in this or that respect, but she was amazing, and was recognised by the audience to be so. She got a reception befitting a great artist who had just delivered a classic account of a major role. My surprise is the greater because I find the hype about her, much of it cleverly auto-generated, incredibly annoying, and I was on the verge of relegating her to that category of fairly gifted singers who are ruined by the contemporary celebrity-making machine.
After its victory at the Golden Globes – and its strong showing in the Bafta nominations – I suspected that the British film Atonement would be a shoo-in for the Best Picture Oscar in February. Now the Oscar nominations have actually been announced, I’m not too sure. Not only are the American films No Country for Old Men (recommended by the Spectator on, count ‘em, one – two – three occasions) and There Will Be Blood leading the pack with eight nominations each, but the director of Atonement, Joe Wright, hasn’t been nominated for Best Director.
Some of the best journalism never appears in print and we had two stunning examples last night. Ross Kemp's journey with 1 Royal Anglian as they prepared for and entered Helmand was vivid and compelling - it had me hooked like an episode of 24. It is the first series I have seen that takes the viewer to the frontline of Britain's most ferocious war since Korea. It was just episode one, but set your Sky Plus for the rest. And if you don't have Sky, this series is the excuse you need to get it. Next was Channel Four's Dispatches presented by my counterpart at the Statesman, Martin Bright, on the cost of Red Ken. It was one jaw-dropping exposure after another.
I took Peter’s advice and went to see No Country for Old Men over the weekend. This is indeed the Coen brothers at their absolute best (which is saying something), as well as a welcome return to the bleak terrain of Blood Simple, the film that made their name in 1984. The core of the movie is a trio of fine performances: Josh Brolin as the guy who stumbles into the aftermath of a drugs shoot-out and takes the cash, Tommy Lee Jones as the baffled, weather-beaten sheriff and Javier Bardem as the psychotic hitman and collector, Anton Chigurh. The film is worth seeing for Bardem’s Golden Globe-winning performance alone which is quite simply one of the most chilling evocations of evil ever brought to the screen.
Lloyd Evans believes that Wilde’s comedy is the best play ever written. The Importance of Being Earnest with Penelope Keith is at the Vaudeville Theatre from 22 January. My favourite play is on its way to the West End and I fully expect to be disappointed. It’s not that Peter Gill’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest hasn’t been widely praised. It has. But I prefer to see the play done by amateurs because with the sheen of professionalism stripped away the brilliance of the script becomes all the more evident. The Importance has been called the best comedy ever written. I’d say it’s the best play ever written. Its structure is flawless.
La Cage aux Folles Menier Chocolate Factory The British Ambassador’s Belly Dancer Arcola Angry Young Man Trafalgar Studio La Cage aux Folles is a musical based on a classic comedy by Jean Poiret. Terry Johnson’s new version is perfectly agreeable. Nice sets, charming actors and the audience loved it. So what’s wrong? Well, the threadbare storyline for a start: Georges has to persuade his gay partner Albin to absent himself from a dinner party because the guests will find their sexuality shocking. That’s it. Trouble is this dilemma feels at least three decades old and the characters — especially M. Renaud the homophobic conservative politician — seem as quaint and irrelevant as the unicorns and damsels sporting on a medieval tapestry.
The Adventures of Pinocchio Grand Theatre, Leeds It’s odd how, even if you try to ignore Christmas, it still manages to determine the shape of your end-of-year experiences. Three weeks ago, four days before Christmas Day, Opera North enterprisingly mounted the world première of Jonathan Dove’s 21st opera, Pinocchio. I haven’t seen any opera since, except on TV and DVD, yet my memories of it are alarmingly faint. I have a pretty clear impression of what much of it looked like, but very little of what it sounded like. I’m not being snide at Dove’s expense, just wondering how far what seems like the interminable sequence of fragmented days is responsible for my failure of recall.
Foyle’s War is back on Sundays, sporadically, with Kingdom filling in the gaps on ITV. The BBC has followed Cranford with Lark Rise to Candleford, a series which makes the intervening Sense and Sensibility look harrowing by comparison. The danger to television is not dumbing-down but, on Sunday nights at least, a sort of down-filled duveting-down. Apparently, the night before we go back to work, we need our brains to hibernate. I’m sure that as the real problems of earning a living loom we don’t want dramas about feral children abandoned by junkie single mothers, or vicious crimes committed in the hell that is urban Britain today. We want pleasant, sanitised murders solved by Honeysuckle Weeks and her boss, Michael Kitchen, who plays Foyle.
Among the serially misused words of our time — celebrity, passion, caring, genius — we must surely count ‘plantsman’. Thirty years ago, it was a term given only to exceptionally knowledgeable, enthusiastic and botanically inclined amateur or professional gardeners, as well as to particularly experienced and thoughtful nurserymen. However, in recent years, ‘plantsman’ or ‘plantswoman’ has come to mean anyone who knows the difference between Amaryllis and Hippeastrum, or who puts a plant in the garden where they think it will be happy, rather than consciously associating it in colour and season with others. Plantsmen knew the names, provenances and, where necessary, complex cultural requirements of all their plants.
The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930 Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February The Age of Enchantment: Beardsley, Dulac and their Contemporaries 1890–1930 Dulwich Picture Gallery, until 17 February Taste is strictly divided over the enchanted visions currently on view at Dulwich. It seems that people are rarely indifferent to this kind of imagery; it either delights or revolts. I must admit that I went more in the spirit of inquiry than enthusiasm. I found a densely hung exhibition — it’s the kind of show you really ought to have a lorgnette for — which makes a surprisingly wide appeal, for the work on view is more varied than I’d anticipated.
No Country for Old Men 15, Nationwide No Country for Old Men, adapted by Joel and Ethan Coen from Cormac McCarthy’s novel, is not for the squeamish or easily spooked, or at least should not be for the squeamish and easily spooked. I am both — in spades — yet found it almost ecstatically absorbing. This is not to say I liked it. But neither is it to say that I didn’t. It’s not a film that asks to be either liked or disliked. It just is, branding itself on to you like a heated iron. It is set in Texas, in 1980, on the USA–Mexico border where the men are men (‘Quit yer hollerin’,’ they say to their womenfolk) and the desert landscape is vast and dry and desolate.
Lord Reith must be turning in his grave. Not with shock and horror, but in amazement that there are still moments on his beloved airwaves when you can imagine yourself back to the beginnings of the BBC, to a world without gizmos and celebrity knockouts and a time when broadcasters were confident enough of their material (and respectful enough of their audience) not to feel that ‘entertainment’ must be added to everything to make their programmes palatable, like MSG or the emulsifier soya lecithin. True, the moments are often buried so deep in the schedules that you’re lucky to find them, or still be awake.
Life is too secure Security is a scary thing. I sometimes get the impression that my life, in so far as it is still my life, has been sealed in bubble wrap by major corporations and filed in a vault behind ten metres of steel. It is obvious, for example, that the only people now capable of accessing my bank account details are criminal hacking gangs. No one with any lesser degree of skill could possibly get through the labyrinthine process that my bank has just installed on its internet portal. I put my most valiant efforts into it just now. I applied every bit of patience and brainpower. I entered my pass code and the last four digits of my debit card. I got the little calculator thingy called PINsentry™ and inserted my debit card into it.
Pete Hoskin At yesterday's low-key Golden Globes ceremony, the British film 'Atonement' was named the Best Dramatic Motion Picture of the year; making it the front-runner for the “Best Picture” Oscar next month. Thankfully – and thanks should go to the Writers' Guild of America – we were spared acceptance speeches yesterday. This meant that there were none of the typical British histrionics that accompany any major film awards win (see Colin Welland and his exclamation that “The British are coming!” at the 1981 Academy Awards). There's no doubt, though, that Welland's sentiment will be repeated – as it is almost every year – in the run-up to this year's Oscars.
Mary Wakefield talks to Eileen Atkins about acting as an out-of-body experience. Eileen Atkins opens in The Sea at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on 23 January. The Eileen Atkins experience — the word ‘interview’ doesn’t even begin to describe it — starts for me at about 3.30 on a brilliant, sunny afternoon in December. There I am in her elegant, airy sitting room overlooking the Thames, surrounded by books and paintings, watching swans shimmy by outside. There I am stroking a cat, listening to Dame Eileen, and just becoming dimly aware that this is not going to be a very run-of-the-mill conversation.
January may traditionally be the year’s grimmest month, characterised as it is by broken resolutions, misery-inducing detox diets and frightening reminders from the Inland Revenue, but at least there are some artistic treats around the corner to beat the blues (until the Arts Council get their way, that is...) The Royal Ballet is in the best shape it has been in for years, not least because of the presence of the young Australian Steven McRae. Hailing from the suburbs of Australia, this effervescent 21-year old fell into dancing quite by accident, but having nabbed the prestigious Prix de Lausanne aged 16, followed by a scholarship to the Royal Ballet School, he has been tearing up the stage at Covent Garden for the past two seasons.
Much Ado About Nothing Olivier The Masque of the Red Death Battersea Arts Centre The Winter’s Tale Courtyard Theatre Simon Russell Beale is working through the complete works of Shakespeare like a Regency beau touring Italy. It’s mid-winter and he’s alighted in Messina to peruse the role of Benedick. With Russell Beale the question is not how well he’ll interpret a new role but how well the character suits his strengths — his warmth and intelligence, his sly donnish humour. Benedick is a good fit. Not perfect, perhaps. The dash and romantic energy aren’t quite there because Russell Beale is, shall we say, a little more settled in his ways than the part requires.
My resolution this year is to make huge sums of money, buy a vast country estate, surround it with a moat and spend the rest of my life hunting, driving fast cars round my private race track and generally trying to maximise my carbon footprint. At Christmas, I shall invite the poor people on to my land to admire my spectacular Christmas light display which will be much brighter and less carbon neutral than the one at Sandringham or even the famous ‘loights’ in Wollaston, nr Stourbridge. And if my vicar objects on environmental grounds, I shall have him sacked because of course his living will be in my gift, and my family will have a special pew in the medieval church and everything.
How do you stop people taking cocaine? Illegality keeps it at bay a bit. It stops it being quite so freely available, but it makes it sexy, too. I wonder how much its illegal status really affects people’s decision whether to take it or not. If the perils inherent aren’t a deterrent, the risk of punishment is hardly likely to sway the balance. People might be encouraged to start smoking, drinking, snorting and ultimately injecting their eyeballs by others, but other people’s efforts and assertions don’t enter the picture when it comes to stopping. In our vices, we hear no other voices. Obviously cocaine is a con, a bad long-term investment.
Hidden Burne-Jones Leighton House Museum, 12 Holland Park Road, London W14, until 27 January It’s always a pleasure to visit Lord Leighton’s house and imagine oneself in a more spacious era, venturing into the artists’ quarter of Kensington and paying a call on one of the most popular artists of the Victorian period. The remarkable architecture of the house with its famous Arab Hall always deserves another look, though the exhibitions mounted in the upstairs gallery are becoming an increasing draw for the art public. Last year it was Leighton’s drawings, now brilliantly followed up by a show of little-known Burne-Jones drawings from Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.
Charlie Wilson’s War 15, Nationwide Mike Nichols’s latest film is a mixed bag and a stuffed bag and, incredibly, none the worse for either. In its rat-a-tat, rapid-fire 95 minutes you get bombings, mines, refugee camps, casualties, hot tubs, Playboy cover girls, arms dealers, cocaine, scandal, Tom Hanks’s naked butt (surprisingly delicious; peachy), CIA agents, world presidents — and all in a movie that is partly serious political satire and partly just a hoot. A film about America’s covert funding of the mujahedin in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan a hoot? Listen, I know a hoot when I see one, and this is a hoot. OK, so who is this Charlie Wilson and what exactly is this war? Good question. Top marks.
How crazy is this! A huge great whopping oil tanker, 250,000 tons of rust-red steel, sails through one of the narrowest, most beautiful and most populated sea straits on the planet. And it’s not the only one. There are 50,000 of them every year. Not quinqueremes these, or even stately galleons. But eyeless giants, lumbering their way through the sea channel that links the silvery Black Sea with the dazzling blue Mediterranean. Bosphorus Battles on Sunday night (Radio Three) took us through these straits (which curve and wind their way through the Turkish capital, Istanbul) as if we were standing on the bridge of one of these maritime monsters, looking out from on high to that haunting cityscape of domes and minarets.
I was given a new take on diplomacy the other day in what you might call the reflective postcoital stage of an interview with a foreign minister from eastern Europe. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘diplomats are really like ladies of easy virtue. Most of our best work is done late at night or at weekends, and we don’t get to choose our partners.’ In racing, too, information does not always come down the conventional route. One of the best tips I ever had came by way of an apology from an owner’s girlfriend who had accidentally poured most of a glass of red wine down my shirt front at Uttoxeter. The only racing day I have lost my shirt and come home a couple of hundred to the good.
Most of my regrets are of sins of omission rather than commission; what I didn’t do rather than what I did. (I’m thinking here of acquisitive opportunities rather than moral actions, where the balance of regret should probably be more even and the total certainly greater.) Recently, I’ve been thinking particularly of an XK150 Jaguar. It was a Norfolk car, a fixed-head coupé, in the days when you could pick them up for £2,500. It went faster than I could drive, seemed solid, had reasonable chrome, looked good in British Racing Green and had been well maintained by a retired gentleman whose son was selling it for him. Others were interested, I was due to travel abroad and that Sunday was my one chance to go to Norfolk and close the deal.