sex
DVD: Fidelio: Alice's JourneyFriday, 12 February 2016
Fidelio: Alice's Journey can literally be described as relating a journey of self-discovery. A mechanic on the Marseille-registered freighter Fidelio, the equally titular Alice navigates the seas with an all-male crew and explores who they are while... Read more... |
DVD: The Diary of a Teenage GirlWednesday, 13 January 2016
About a dozen years ago the publishing industry cottoned on to the sex lives of women. Memoirs in which women wrote with complete candour about their sex lives appeared in sudden profusion, from Belle de Jour's blog-turned-book and The Sex Life of... Read more... |
DVD: LoveTuesday, 05 January 2016
Sex sells, except in the cinema. So although it denies viewers the sight of Karl Glusman’s erect penis swinging towards them across a giant screen in 3D, home video is Love’s natural home. Director Gaspar Noé’s attempt to “make movies out of blood,... Read more... |
London Spy, Series Finale, BBC TwoTuesday, 08 December 2015
Well, they're saying this was the final episode, but these days you never know how long TV's ratings-hungry marketeers might eke a successful show out for. London Spy 2 would be a major ask, considering how this series somehow spun a bare minimum of... Read more... |
DVD: Closely Observed TrainsFriday, 27 November 2015
There’s never been any agreement about translating the participle. Its victory as 1968’s best foreign film is listed on oscars.org as Closely Watched Trains. The novel by Bohumil Hrabal is generally known in English as Closely Observed Trains, and... Read more... |
Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 13 November 2015
Teenagers lie – that’s nothing new. But are the activities they’re concealing from anxious parents in this oversharing digital age more extreme, more likely to define their lives and those of the people around them? James Fritz’s 90-minute debut,... Read more... |
Doctor Foster, Series Finale, BBC OneThursday, 08 October 2015
Revenge dramas are such a guilty pleasure - there's a vicarious thrill in watching a baddie being taken down in a way that we might wish to, but never would, in real life. And boy, but did Gemma take down cheating husband Simon in the closing... Read more... |
Tipping the Velvet, Lyric HammersmithTuesday, 29 September 2015
Theatre is in the very bones of this bold adaptation, with the Lyric gifted a cameo role: past productions are fleetingly pastiched in a flashback to the era of the venue’s foundation. Laura Wade and Lyndsey Turner translate the vividly... Read more... |
Lady Chatterley's Lover, BBC OneMonday, 07 September 2015
The major controversy of this revisionist BBC adaptation is not DH Lawrence’s naughty bits, but the lack of them. Gone are the four-letter words and personified genitals – just one half-embarrassed mention of “John Thomas” – while graphic sexual... Read more... |
The Scandalous Lady W, BBC TwoTuesday, 18 August 2015
What exactly do we expect when a drama opens with the declaration, “This is a true story”? The Scandalous Lady W, based on Hallie Rubenhold’s biography Lady Worsley’s Whim, brought us some unusual 18th century marriage shenanigans that ended in one... Read more... |
The Secret Life of Tinder, Channel 4Friday, 15 May 2015
Lucky old us. We are now living “in a techno-sexual era”. So claimed this documentary about dating apps which radar-guide you to the nearest available groin. If groins are your thing, that is, and they are by no means everyone’s. We heard about a... Read more... |
The Father, Trafalgar StudiosFriday, 20 March 2015
This 1887 domestic drama by August Strindberg is rarely seen in London, and Abbey Wright’s new production of Laurie Slade’s new version might have seized the opportunity to give this gristly chunk of pre-Freudian sexual polemic a thorough 21st-... Read more... |
