Arts
Valuable reassessment of British art: Barbican's Postwar Modern reviewed
Notoriously, the past is another country: what’s more, it’s a terrain for which the guidebooks need constantly to be rewritten.…
Unhurried and accomplished whodunit: ITV's Holding reviewed
A couple of years ago, I happened to read Graham Norton’s third novel Home Stretch. Rather patronisingly, perhaps, I was…
Great musicals
It’s strange how literature finds its way into other mediums. The current French film festival includes a film of Balzac’s…
Fabulously boring: Weather Station's How Is It That I Should Look at the Stars reviewed
Grade: C– Anyone remember that TV advert for Canada from the 1980s – a succession of colourful images, including a…
Renaissance radical: Carlo Crivelli – Shadows on the Sky at Ikon Gallery reviewed
‘Camp,’ wrote Susan Sontag, ‘is the paintings of Carlo Crivelli, with their real jewels and trompe-l’oeil insects and cracks in…
What’ll happen next – or what’s happened so far – is anybody’s guess: The Ipcress File reviewed
ITV’s new version of The Ipcress File began with a close-up of a pair of black-rimmed glasses just like those…
Stands alongside Under Milk Wood: Shedding a Skin, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
Shedding a Skin opens with an office nightmare. Amanda is a mixed-race employee in a predominantly white firm who gets…
New Marr is very much the same as the old Marr: LBC's Tonight With Andrew Marr reviewed
Andrew Marr got his voice back this week. That may come as a bit of a surprise to everybody who’s…
Astonishing, if unnecessary, grandstanding: Barbara Hannigan's La voix humaine reviewed
I think it was when she leaned forward and balanced on one leg that Barbara Hannigan jumped the shark. It…
A compelling, if flawed, example of the new American noir: Red Rocket reviewed
Mikey (Simon Rex) first appears striding down a road in utterly wrecked jeans and shirt. He is carrying nothing and…
Film's most unforgettable scene
Fifty years since The Godfather’s release, Thomas W. Hodgkinson revisits the film’s most unforgettable scene
Tinkling irrevelancies?
So Opera Australia is in quest of a new artistic director to replace Lyndon Terracini. It’s a good moment to…
Paul Bettany's Warhol is a tour de force: The Collaboration, at the Young Vic, reviewed
The Collaboration is set in the 1980s when Andy Warhol teamed up with the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat to create bad…
Too neat but it has hooks aplenty: Avril Lavigne's Love Sux reviewed
Grade: B Yay, life just gets better and better. World War Three and now this. More petulant popcorn pre-school punk…
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Enthralling and unusual – even if you don't care about Kanye: Netflix's Jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy reviewed
The most disappointing pop performance I’ve ever seen – and in the course of my 15-odd years as a music…
Humourless and stale: The Batman reviewed
The latest Batman film, The Batman, may be a reboot, or even a reboot of a rebooted reboot that’s been…
The genius of Iannis Xenakis
This year is the centenary of the birth of Iannis Xenakis, the Greek composer-architect who called himself an ancient Greek…
Some of the best social commentary around: Celebrity Book Club with Steven & Lily reviewed
When I was ten years old I had a babysitter who was a beautiful graduate student at an Ivy League…
Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Stuart Jeffries on Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning art scene
Got a gun in my hand
The final scene in the brilliant television series The Sopranos is set in a diner where Tony’s family is gathered…
Richard Roxburgh
It’s not often that you get such a rapturous reception for a new show as Fun Home received and the…
For all its absurdity, it delivers the goods: BBC2's Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America reviewed
In the latest episode of Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America, Louis asked a rapper called Broke Baby if ‘it’s important to…
In praise of the Dome
We should learn to love our turn-of-the-millennium architecture, says Helen Barrett, starting with the Dome
The buzz band of 2022 sound like they're from 1982: Yard Act, at Village Underground reviewed
One of the curiosities of modern pop’s landscape is that no one knows any longer how to measure success. An…
