sex
Blue ValentineWednesday, 12 January 2011![]() The American indie Blue Valentine was heralded in October by a sexy W magazine cover of its stars - Ryan Gosling smooching Michelle Williams’s temple as she parts her becrimsoned lips and gazes provocatively at us - and the restrictive NC-17... Read more... |
Love & Other DrugsTuesday, 28 December 2010![]() It’s difficult to know how to categorise Love & Other Drugs; is it a rom-com, a biopic, a melodrama, a satire or a hard-hitting attack on the influence that mega pharmaceutical companies have on America’s healthcare system? The film’s makers,... Read more... |
Easier With PracticeWednesday, 01 December 2010![]() Easier with Practice is a film about phone sex based on a short story that appeared in GQ magazine. It’s enough to make any right-thinking filmgoer not in the Will Ferrell/Chuck Palahniuk/American Pie core demographic head for another screen – any... Read more... |
Les Parents Terribles, Trafalgar StudiosMonday, 29 November 2010![]() This is the final production in the Donmar Warehouse’s 12-week season at Trafalgar Studios (which showcases the work of its resident assistant directors) and is a revival of Jeremy Sams’s translation of Jean Cocteau’s play - first seen in Sean... Read more... |
Blasted, Lyric HammersmithThursday, 28 October 2010![]() If any play of the past two decades deserves the label legendary it must be Sarah Kane’s debut, which was condemned as “this disgusting feast of filth” on its arrival in 1995, but is now firmly ensconced in the canon of contemporary playwriting.... Read more... |
Greg Davies, Bloomsbury TheatreFriday, 22 October 2010![]() Greg Davies is a comedian who laughs along to his own material. A conspiratorial look glints in his eye, a hint of fruity mischief plays on his lips. The adage that you should never be amused by your own punchlines is, of course, a tall tower of... Read more... |
Placebo, Brixton AcademyTuesday, 28 September 2010![]() My, haven’t they grown? In the several years (perhaps even a decade) since I last caught Placebo live, they’ve gone from being a scrawny three-piece with a somewhat thin sound – for much of the gig, I saw, they didn’t even have a bassist on stage –... Read more... |
Sunday Night Comedy, Lyric HammersmithSunday, 26 September 2010![]() Nowadays, stand-ups who can fill the Enormodome grow on trees. But once upon a time, before comedy was the new rock’n’roll, that sort of thing didn’t happen. Then David Baddiel and Rob Newman played Wembley Arena. It feels like a long time ago.... Read more... |
True Blood, Channel 4Friday, 24 September 2010![]() How did vampires manage to stage a near-total hijack of the popular media? It used to be just Christopher Lee in a cloak with Hammer Films’ home-made cardboard bats hanging on wires over his head, but now we’re up to our throats in Buffy, Angel, The... Read more... |
Enter the VoidThursday, 23 September 2010![]() The constant strobing lights us white like we’re watching an Atom bomb test. From its garish credit sequence to the somehow inevitable vagina’s view of a penetrating penis, Enter the Void attempts assaultive cinema. You’d expect no less from Gaspar... Read more... |
Wanderlust, Royal Court TheatreFriday, 17 September 2010![]() Middle-class family angst is this season’s theme at the Royal Court Theatre. And, in his new play about sex and intimacy, which opened last night, playwright Nick Payne puts the lust in Wanderlust and creates a contemporary tale of wandering hands... Read more... |
Design For Living, Old Vic TheatreThursday, 16 September 2010![]() Design For Living is one of Noël Coward’s less performed plays but it fair crackles with bons mots - you know you’re in good hands when delightfully old-fashioned words like “horrid”, “bloody”, “cheap” and “vulgar” are tossed around with, well, gay... Read more... |
