1950s
The FounderWednesday, 15 February 2017
Last year we had Jennifer Lawrence as the queen of the QVC shopping channel in Joy. For 2017, here’s Michael Keaton as Ray Kroc, a struggling travelling salesman who went on to become the driving force behind the McDonald's fast-food empire. I’m... Read more... |
FencesThursday, 09 February 2017
Fences is one of the best-known works by playwright August Wilson, part of his Century Cycle of plays exploring 100 years of black American history, and it won him a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award in 1987. Wilson died in 2005, but further... Read more... |
Mexrrissey, Brighton DomeSaturday, 28 January 2017
The name Mexrrissey may be unfamiliar, but the concept of a Mexican band playing mariachi-style versions of songs by Morrissey and The Smiths has brought out a decent-sized audience on a freezing January night. Their set is uneven and musically... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Roy AcuffSunday, 15 January 2017
In 1942, Roy Acuff set up Acuff-Rose Music in partnership with Nashville-based songwriter and talent scout Fred Rose. The new publishing company was dedicated to treating songwriters decently. They would not be cheated out of their copyrights. There... Read more... |
Grantchester, Christmas Special, ITVSunday, 25 December 2016
Cambridge 1954, and Christmas was coming, which meant carol singing, mince pies and an unnecessarily conceptual nativity play. But murder was also on the menu, and once again handsome, jazz-loving vicar Sidney Chambers (James Norton) was about to... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Ruth Franklin - Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted LifeSunday, 11 December 2016
When asked about her most famous short story, "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson said, “I hate it. I’ve lived with that thing 15 years. Nobody will ever let me forget it.” Sixty-eight years later, it’s seared into the American psyche and has been a set... Read more... |
Rillington Place, BBC OneWednesday, 30 November 2016
Howard Brenton (Christie in Love) and Ruth Rendell (Thirteen Steps Down) are just two of the many writers inspired by the sordid goings-on in 1940s Notting Hill. John Reginald Christie was a postman, a policeman and a psychopath who, as a back-... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Mose Allison, Georgie FameSunday, 27 November 2016
In 1970, The Who opened their Live at Leeds album with “Young Man Blues”, a hefty version of a song its composer Mose Allison recorded as “Blues” in 1957. Back then, it was the only vocal track on Back Country Suite, an otherwise instrumental blues-... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Odds Against TomorrowSaturday, 26 November 2016
Robert Wise directed the 1959 bank heist thriller Odds Against Tomorrow after the classic film noir cycle had ended, but it's an exemplary noir nonetheless. In its day it was an important transitional work – a race-relations allegory... Read more... |
A United KingdomTuesday, 22 November 2016
It's remarkable that the story of Seretse Khama, the king of Bechuanaland, isn't more popularly known, though Amma Asante's film may change all that. The movie opens in a smoggy, gloomy London in 1947, where Seretse (David Oyelowo) is completing his... Read more... |
American PastoralFriday, 11 November 2016
Ewan McGregor has been judged unworthy of adapting Philip Roth in the US. But his directorial debut is finely crafted, and powered by visceral emotion embodied in one of his best performances. As Seymour “Swede” Levov, he’s an All-Jewish-American... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-Ray: The Small World of Sammy LeeFriday, 11 November 2016
In case one thought that turning hit TV shows into movies was a 21st century phenomenon, here comes a restoration of The Small World of Sammy Lee to prove that film-makers were at it back in 1963.Writer-director Ken Hughes's noir drama started off... Read more... |
