Getting Wilde in America
Oscar Wilde’s search for fame and himself
The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Oscar Wilde’s search for fame and himself
Bad Times at the El Royale reviewed
There is only one thing wrong with the 50 th Anniversary edition of this wonderful album, and that is that it is all too prescient
The Roseanne reboot flew in the ratings when it returned earlier this year. How will it fare without the titular star?
Colette reviewed
We’ve grown increasingly obsessed with dystopian narratives since 2016. But why do we look to Orwell’s vision when Huxley’s rings truer?
The phrase ‘get woke, go broke’ captures well why Doctor Who was losing fans – and I’m not sure the writing in the new series dispenses with this problem
More power and glory from the dead poet, singer, lover and humourist
America’s prom queen endorsed two Tennessee Democrats this weekend
Private Life reviewed
Jan van Eyck at the Frick Collection
Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer reviewed
Kanye West’s message could do for black America what Trump’s did for the people of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin
His rant against Democrats was more fun and interesting than the celebrity-endorsed jokes against Kavanaugh that took up the rest of the show
‘Tell ‘em Lindsey sent you!’ he squeaked, offering himself up like a human sacrifice on the altar of entertainment
What might an evening at the flicks with the 45th President look like?
The family drama behind the PBS show
Surely supposed editorial issues at the NYRB could have been addressed without taking the step of dismissing Buruma
The snowflakes aren’t melting as they get older and wiser. They now have jobs in publishing and media and are marching through the institutions they work for
We could believe either Allen’s version or Farrow’s, but that would get us no closer to the truth, because neither is trustworthy and both are proven fantasists
The New York Review of Books editor is the latest casualty of the identitarian mob
The legendary tenor saxophonist died last weekend aged 91
Delacroix in the flesh, at the Met
The critics who disliked 2001 on its initial release found the characters empty and the plot thin — but it’s their criticism that has dated badly
Jazz may be an egalitarian, collaborative music, but jazz musicians honor their best with the laurels of hierarchy. Everyone knows the royal monikers of ‘Duke’ Ellington and ‘Count’ Basie, and most people know that Billie Holiday was ‘Lady Day’. But there’s also a whole aristocracy of hip name-drops: ‘The Baron’ (Charles Mingus), ‘Pres’ (Lester Young),
This adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s play is handsomely mounted, as they say, and features a stellar cast (including Annette Bening, Elisabeth Moss and Saoirse Ronan), but it won’t be setting the world alight. It is not a waste of 90 minutes, and Bening is superb, as if you even needed me to tell you that.
Reports of the death of bookstores are fiction. In 1931, there were about 4,000 bookstores in the United States. Almost all of them were gift stores, selling a limited stock of paperbacks. Only about 500 of them were specialist bookstores, and almost all of them were in major cities. True, between 1995 and 2000, the
Yardie is Idris Elba’s first film as a director and what I have to say isn’t what I wanted to say at all. I love Elba and wanted this to be terrific. I wanted him to be as good from behind as he is from the front, so to speak. I wanted this to absolutely
The group melded the materialism of the urban landscape with what was idealistic and essentially Romantic about the city