1960s
Endeavour, Series 4 Finale, ITVMonday, 30 January 2017![]() There were signs of a collision as early as the second series. The event loomed larger in the third last year and last night, after an actual car crash, it finally happened: Endeavour became interchangeable with Midsomer Murders. How are the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Guy DarrellSunday, 29 January 2017![]() In the last week of September 1973, Guy Darrell peaked at number 12 on the British single’s chart with the catchy blue-eyed soul pounder “I’ve Been Hurt” and performed on Top of the Pops. His was a grassroots-driven success. “I’ve Been Hurt” was... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Tessa Hadley - Bad DreamsSunday, 22 January 2017![]() In one of Tessa Hadley’s piercingly smart and subtle tales, a woman whose upwardly-mobile path has taken her from Leeds to Philadelphia works for a firm that manufactures instruments to test the “tensile strength” of materials. You can treat the... Read more... |
JackieFriday, 20 January 2017![]() “A First Lady must always be ready to pack her suitcases,” remarks Jackie Kennedy (Natalie Portman). Melania Trump, take note. Jackie, the first English-language film by the Chilean director Pablo Larrain (Neruda, No), is set in the week following... Read more... |
CD: Bob Dylan - The Real Royal Albert Hall ConcertTuesday, 06 December 2016![]() Hailing a lift in torrential rain one night from an early 2000s Dylan concert at Docklands Arena – that long-gone ghost of a room – I fell into conversation with a fellow passenger who apologetically turned to me, admitting in old-fashioned Received... 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... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Actor Robert VaughnSaturday, 12 November 2016![]() New York-born actor Robert Vaughn, who has died at the age of 83, achieved massive popular success when he starred as the sleek secret agent Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which ran for four seasons from 1964 to 1968 and exploited the... 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... |
Aberfan: The Green Hollow, BBC FourMonday, 24 October 2016![]() Television is not a medium we much associate with any sense of the "sacred". It grapples with "momentous" frequently enough, in snatches of news tragically reported; it rings in, and out, the history that defines our lives. We may debate, equally,... Read more... |
Ouija: Origin of EvilFriday, 21 October 2016![]() A prequel to Ouija (2014), Ouija: Origin of Evil zooms back to a mid-Sixties Los Angeles that's all miniskirts, white PVC boots, splendid chromed-up Chevrolets and Studebakers and clangy garage-band pop music. Our hosts are widowed mom Alice Zander... Read more... |
One Night in Miami..., Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 18 October 2016![]() Kemp Powers’s play is set in a motel room in Miami on the night of 25 February 1964, after Cassius Clay (as Muhammad Ali then was) had earlier beaten Sonny Liston to gain the world heavyweight title. He is joined by two friends, the singer Sam Cooke... Read more... |
