1960s
DVD: L'EclisseTuesday, 22 September 2015
Antonioni’s celebrated trio of films, L’Aventura, La Notte and L’Eclisse, established the Italian director as a major and influential force in world cinema. All three of the works deal with the failure that resides at the heart of human relationship... Read more... |
Casa Valentina, Southwark PlayhouseSunday, 20 September 2015
The “femmepersonators” of Harvey Fierstein’s 1962-set drama would be flabbergasted by today’s level of trans visibility, from Grayson Perry and Caitlyn Jenner to Transparent and Eddie Redmayne’s new film The Danish Girl. Yet it’s the still pertinent... Read more... |
The World Goes Pop, Tate ModernSaturday, 19 September 2015
There’s no sign of Oldenburg, Warhol or Lichtenstein and British pioneers Eduardo Paolozzi and Peter Blake are notably absent from this gritty vision of Pop art. Only in the final room do we come face-to-face with a Campbell’s Tomato Soup tin, the... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: The London American Label – 1966Sunday, 06 September 2015
Various Artists: The London American Label Year by Year – 1966The arguments for 1966 as the year popular music irrevocably changed are sound. Rock began emerging from pop as its serious offspring. Earnest expression, as opposed to fluffiness... Read more... |
A Day in the Life of Andy Warhol, BBC FourWednesday, 26 August 2015
It was suggested more than once during this adventure in Warhol-world that Andy Warhol himself was the artist’s greatest achievement. It’s a neat sentiment if not an original one, and while it may well be true, it didn’t bode well for a documentary... Read more... |
theartsdesk in New York: Folk CitySunday, 16 August 2015
If you liked the Coen Brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis, with its Dave Van Ronk-esque hero in Greenwich Village in 1961, you'll enjoy the new exhibition Folk City: New York and the Folk Music Revival, a celebration of NYC as the centre of folk music... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Stax Soul SensationsSunday, 16 August 2015
Various Artists: Ian Levine’s Stax Soul SensationsTaking 41 years to follow up a successful compilation is perhaps not sound in commercial terms. No matter. Ian Levine’s Stax Soul Sensations is not about marketability, but instead about... Read more... |
Hot August Night: The Beatles at Shea StadiumSaturday, 15 August 2015
Half a century ago today, on a warm August Sunday night in New York, The Beatles played a 30-minute concert in a baseball field. Home to the New York Mets the venue was called the William A Shea Municipal Stadium and had opened in spring 1964.In... Read more... |
Shirley Baker, Photographers' GalleryThursday, 30 July 2015
When a photographer is as little known as Shirley Baker, it is probably only natural that we scour her work for clues to the personality behind the camera. Certainly, Baker’s photographs of inner city Salford and Manchester, taken over a period of... Read more... |
Prom 11: Fiddler on the Roof, Grange Park OperaSunday, 26 July 2015
Stop miking Bryn Terfel. Stop over-miking musicals; the show voices in a hybrid cast don’t need much. Too much ruined English National Opera’s recent Sweeney Todd, and in this Proms adaptation of Grange Park Opera’s summer crowd-pleaser it sent the... Read more... |
Best of EnemiesTuesday, 21 July 2015
It wasn’t quite Ali vs Frazier. But the 1968 debates between William F Buckley, Jr and Gore Vidal were as bruising (nearly literally) as TV had seen, and haunted the protagonists for the rest of their lives. Morgan Neville and Robert Gordan’s... Read more... |
Matthew Bourne's The Car Man, Sadler's WellsMonday, 20 July 2015
The original idea for the subtitle of this show, first made in 2000 and last seen at Sadler's Wells in 2007, was apparently "An Auto-Erotic Thriller". Yes, groan. But "erotic thriller" is a much straighter description of The Car Man than its actual... Read more... |
