money
Margin CallWednesday, 11 January 2012
Margin Call, a smart, taut and brutally frank portrait of the money game, asks a lot of its audience. A movie about traders as, if not quite good guys, then at least rounded guys? It’s not a trick Oliver Stone ever managed to pull off, and he tried... Read more... |
Opinion: Oligarchs and oiligarchs have made art a luxuryWednesday, 28 December 2011
For me, 2011 will go down as the year in which the fact that artworks have become luxury goods – playthings for the rich – could no longer be ignored. In response Damien Hirst, one of the first artists to turn himself into a brand, is sprinkling the... Read more... |
Beauty and the Beast, Royal Lyceum, EdinburghTuesday, 13 December 2011
This year's seasonal production from the Lyceum is one of those shows that feels more like an uninspired stocking filler than a big, beautiful, beribboned gift. Neither magically Christmassy (it begins on Halloween, and the only substance falling... Read more... |
Dragons' Den, BBC TwoSunday, 31 July 2011
Meet the new Dragon, slightly different from the old Dragons. Or is she? For series nine, the squad of rich, grumpy bastards is joined by “formidable businesswoman and self-made multimillionaire Hilary Devey”, as presenter Evan Davis introduced her.... Read more... |
Road Show, Menier Chocolate FactoryThursday, 07 July 2011
"Onward we go," the hearty but essentially hapless Wilson Mizner (David Bedella) remarks well into Road Show, the Stephen Sondheim/John Weidman musical that has been slow-aborning, and then some, since it first appeared in workshop form in New York... Read more... |
Win WinThursday, 19 May 2011
Surely, any film called Win Win and starring Paul Giamatti is being deeply ironic? After all, you don't expect the hangdog star of Sideways and Barney's Version to do the feel-good Hollywood thing, and it seems of a piece with Giamatti's baleful,... Read more... |
Betty Blue Eyes, Novello TheatreThursday, 14 April 2011
Foot fetishists will have a field day at Betty Blue Eyes, given that the producer Cameron Mackintosh's latest venture is also the first in my experience to sing of bunions, calluses and corns, the last encompassing a passing reference to a lyric... Read more... |
Inside JobWednesday, 16 February 2011
Inside Inside Job is an interesting film struggling to get out. Sadly, one has to sit through two hours of Financial Meltdown 101 to see it. Narrated by Matt Damon in his serious voice (and if you're anything like me, you'll always be thinking of... Read more... |
Boardwalk Empire takes a bowWednesday, 02 February 2011
It's here! HBO's Boardwalk Empire finally arrived last night, the big news on the opening day of the new Sky Atlantic channel. Already staggering under a burden of Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild and Directors Guild awards, Boardwalk looks likely... Read more... |
Wall Street: Money Never SleepsMonday, 04 October 2010
The long-delayed sequel has earned no more than a small, insignificant footnote in movie history. Psycho II, Gregory’s Two Girls and Texasville, to name only three disparate examples, were all superfluous post-scriptums to much venerated, much... Read more... |
The Thunderbolt, Orange Tree TheatreSunday, 05 September 2010
So much of this London theatre year has been spent watching American work that it's doubly bracing to find some genuine English dramatic rediscoveries interspersed amongst The Prisoner of Second Avenue and La Bête one month, Clybourne Park and (... Read more... |
The real reason Enron flopped on Broadway?Thursday, 06 May 2010This week, after a performance of Enron at the Noel Coward Theatre, I chaired a Q&A session with director Rupert Goold, writer Lucy Prebble, actor Sam West and most of the rest of the cast. What no one in the room knew then, though Goold and... Read more... |
