India
Hussain, Symphony Orchestra of India, Dalal, Symphony Hall, Birmingham review - new sounds from a new bandWednesday, 20 February 2019
For its first ever performance in this country, the Symphony Orchestra of India - formed in only 2006 - kicked off its UK tour in spectacular style at Symphony Hall, Birmingham yesterday evening. Based at the National Centre of Performing Arts in... Read more... |
The Sound of Movie Musicals with Neil Brand, BBC Four review - genius of song and danceSaturday, 22 December 2018
The movie musical: money making or true art – or both? This was a programme to sing along to, in the company of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard. In this second instalment of Neil Brand’s brilliant three-part history, he... Read more... |
An Adventure, Bush Theatre review - epic but flawedSaturday, 15 September 2018
Director Madani Younis, who since 2011 has transformed the Bush Theatre in West London into one of London's most outstanding Off-West End venues, is leaving in December, on his way to becoming the creative director of the Southbank Centre. For his... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: ShirazTuesday, 13 March 2018
The subtitle of Franz Osten’s 1928 film, A Romance of India, says it all: this Indian silent film is a tremendous watch, a revelation of screen energy and visual delight. An epic love story-cum-weepie with lashings of action and intrigue thrown in,... Read more... |
Bruno Maçães: The Dawn of Eurasia review - middle of nowhereSunday, 21 January 2018
Part travelogue and part broad analysis of the current and future challenges facing the EU, the premise of Bruno Maçães’s new book The Dawn of Eurasia is to “use travel to provide an injection of reality of political, economic and historical... Read more... |
Blue Planet II, BBC One review - just how fragile?Monday, 11 December 2017
The eel is dying. Its body flits through a series of complicated knots which become increasingly grotesque torques. Immersed in a pool of brine — concentrated salt water five times denser than seawater — it is succumbing to toxic shock. As biomatter... Read more... |
Blu-ray: The PartyFriday, 13 October 2017
There are two elephants in Blake Edwards’ 1968 comedy The Party. One appears literally at the film’s climax, emblazoned with graffiti. More significant, and troubling, is the metaphorical elephant in the room: that we’re invited to laugh at a white... Read more... |
Victoria and Abdul review - Judi Dench's Queen Victoria retread battles creaky scriptFriday, 15 September 2017
The charm quickly palls in Victoria and Abdul, a watery sequel of sorts to Mrs Brown that salvages what lustre it can from its octogenarian star, the indefatigable Judi Dench. Illuminating a little-known friendship between Queen Victoria in her... Read more... |
Hotel Salvation review - a moving meditation on the endFriday, 25 August 2017
There’s a rare combination of the sacred and the secular in Shubhashish Bhutiani’s debut feature Hotel Salvation (Mukti Bhawan). The young Indian director developed the film through a Venice festival production support programme awarded on the... Read more... |
Arundhati Roy: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness review - brilliant fragments of divided IndiaSunday, 28 May 2017
Just as in the United States, the quest among Indian authors in English to deliver the single, knock-out novel that would capture their country’s infinite variety has long been the stuff of parody. More than two decades ago, the writer-politician... Read more... |
Sachin: A Billion Dreams review - the incredible feats of cricket's 'Little Master'Friday, 26 May 2017
There are great sportsmen, and on top of those there’s a handful of phenomena. Sachin Tendulkar is one of the latter, a cricketer of seemingly limitless gifts who’s ranked among such deities as Viv Richards and Brian Lara. Or even Don Bradman, who... Read more... |
Viceroy's HouseFriday, 03 March 2017
The Partition of India is vast and unexplored terrain in modern cinema. It triggered the migration of 14 million people: Muslims moved from an India reduced in size overnight to the new homeland of Pakistan, and non-Muslims made the opposite journey... Read more... |
