France
Blue Is the Warmest ColourWednesday, 20 November 2013
“The most potent special effect in movies is the human face changing its mind.” So stated film critic David Thomson, and the principle has never been more irrefutably proven than by Blue Is the Warmest Colour and its leading lady Adèle Exarchopoulos... Read more... |
DVD: ClochemerleTuesday, 19 November 2013
Clochemerle is the very odd one out in Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s scriptwriting career. It was their only adaptation, from Gabriel Chevallier’s 1934 comic novel set in the titular Beaujolais small town a decade before, and their only step away... Read more... |
La Damnation de Faust, LSO, Gergiev, BarbicanMonday, 04 November 2013
Berlioz wanted to make the first arrival of his demon onstage unforgettable, with an extreme sound effect - violins and violas marked sul ponticello, strettissimo, starting fortissimo, with interjections from three trombones snarling in minor... Read more... |
The Male Nude, Wallace CollectionWednesday, 30 October 2013
It is amazing how perceptions and attitudes change. Think of a nude and the chances are you will imagine a naked woman since, nowadays, the female body virtually monopolises the genre; naked men scarcely make an appearance in mainstream culture.... Read more... |
Tharaud, London Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus, Nézet-Séguin, Royal Festival HallThursday, 24 October 2013
If ever there were a week for London to celebrate Poulenc in the lamentably under-commemorated 50th anniversary year of his death, this is it. Two major choral works and two fun concertos at last join the party. But if Figure Humaine and the... Read more... |
The Tunnel, Sky AtlanticThursday, 17 October 2013
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the creators of Scandinavia's drama boom could be forgiven if they started behaving like a collection of hysterical Justin Biebers. Not only are their home-grown series hits around the world, they're... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Abuse of WeaknessMonday, 14 October 2013
In 2004 French director Catherine Breillat suffered a stroke. Three years later, she was cheated out of nearly a million euros by a known conman whom she was intending to cast in a film. She later suggested he took advantage of her still-reduced... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Blue Is the Warmest ColourSunday, 13 October 2013
Go for the lesbian sex, leave knowing relationships are all the same: that's the nutshell of French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche's explicit, intimate and lengthy drama Blue Is the Warmest Color (aka Le Vie D’Adèle), the Palme d’Or winner at... Read more... |
LFF 2013: Grand CentralSaturday, 12 October 2013
Rebecca Zlotowski catches the blue-collar underbelly of France at dangerous work and uneasy play in her second feature Grand Central. Tahar Rahim from A Prophet leads as Gary, rejected by his family and looking for any job going: it turns out to be... Read more... |
Patrice Chéreau, 1944-2013: a partial viewTuesday, 08 October 2013
It has to be partial, because out of the 10 opera productions from the iconoclastic French actor-director, who died yesterday of lung cancer at the age of 68, I’ve seen but two, on screen only – but a big two at that – and only three of his 11 films... Read more... |
Le Week-EndMonday, 07 October 2013
One of the joys of autumn is the seasonal return to films about - and intended for - grown-ups, and movies don't come much more crisply and buoyantly adult than Le Week-End, at once the latest and best from the director/writer team of Roger... Read more... |
DVD: Les InvisiblesTuesday, 17 September 2013
Eleven life stories, and memories stretching back more than half a century. The protagonists of Sebastian Lifshitz’s Les Invisibles (The Invisible Ones) tell their different stories of growing up homosexual in France in years when their sexual... Read more... |
