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Albums
Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut albumĀ Fanm dāAyiti,...
Behind the Song
Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’
'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...
Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’
'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early...
Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’
'Subterraneans' is theĀ closingĀ song on what has become perhaps David...
Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’
Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...
Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’
Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an...
Tracks of the Week
Tracks of the Week 17.02.24
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut album Fanm...
Tracks of the Week 10.02.24
From 'Old Shep' and 'Old King' to 'Cracker Jack'...
Tracks of the Week 03.02.24
The creative life of the composer Cergio Prudencio -...
At the Movies
How to Steal a Million (1966)
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Ā½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Nicole Bonnet (Audrey Hepburn) is the daughter of an art forger, who has gathered so many supposed masterpieces in his private collection that he has won considerable renown in the world of art. Approached by the KlĆ©ber-Lafayette Museum, he proudly loans to the illustrious Paris institution (which for the sake of the film occupies the building of the real-life MusĆ©e Carnavalet) his most prized possession, his Cellini 'Venus'...
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) ownsĀ a warehouse which manufactures and sells novelty goodsĀ - toilet plungers with supposedly non-breakable handles and so on - but channels all of his hopes into one venture: having carried out his research diligently, and as far as the vagaries of the promotion will allow, he has come to understand that by purchasing gross quantities of Healthy Choice pudding...
Tully (2018)
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Ā½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Tully is the third collaboration between director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, following on from Juno (2007) and Young Adult (2011). All three films deal with the role of women as child-bearers, looking in turn at teenage pregnancy and adoption, miscarriage, and postpartum depression, which in this case borders on psychosis...
October Sky (1999)
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(3 out of 4 stars) - October Sky is a quaint coming-of-age picture utterly characteristic of this period in American cinema: polished but earnest, overtly sentimental, full of local colour, ostensibly presenting some hard-hitting themes without ever straying from the steely confines of quaint. It's in the same mould as films like The Cider House Rules and especially Billy Elliot, which it preceded by more than a year...
Hard Eight (1996)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - A black and blue semi-trailer truck passes by a coffee shop whose exterior lights are askew, and a man in a dark overcoat waits for the truck to pass, pauses for a moment more, then crosses the road towards coffee. Outside the diner a young man sits on the ground, bedraggled and bestubbled, knees up, arms crossed and looking despondent...
World Cinema
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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Ā½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Five teenagers take a road trip to visit an old family homestead in the musty heart of Texas. The radio plays the news, a grim recitation of industrial and environmental disasters and acts of wanton violence. They discuss astrology, retrograde planets and the malevolent influence of Saturn; stop off at the gravesite of a deceased grandfather amid reports of grave robbing; and after passing a slaughterhouse for beef cattle, they pick up a hitchhiker...
Halloween (1978)
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(2 out of 4 stars) - In the suburban neighbourhood of Haddonfield, Illinois, on Halloween night, 1963, while other kids are out trick-or-treating, a six-year-old boy without any apparent motivation creeps up the stairs, slips on a mask, and slashes to death his near-nude teenage sister. Fifteen years later he's still confined to Smith's Grove, a sanatorium for psychiatric patients, but he breaks out and returns to Haddonfield...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongsideĀ The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
North by Northwest (1959)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - A Madison Avenue advertising man, run-of-the-mill if unusually tanned with his grey flannel suit an impeccable fit, stands up at the wrong moment in the Oak Room of the Plaza Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. Roger Thornhill has theatre tickets. He wishes to send a wire to his mother, but by summoning the wrong waiter and ostensibly responding to the wrong call, he gets mistaken for George Kaplan, a government agent.
Enola Holmes (2020)
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(2 out of 4 stars) - Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), the youngest sibling in the illustrious Holmes family, grew up for all intents and purposes as an only child. At the lavish country house which is now on the cusp of being consumed by nature, she was home-schooled by her mother, who provided an unorthodox education encompassing everything from word games, chess, and jujitsu to chemistry, botany, and lawn tennis played indoors...
Earthy Anecdotes
Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle...
Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene
One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...
Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford, And The League That Got Away
In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...
Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring
On 29 MayĀ 1913,Ā The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...
Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at MĆ©dan by Paul CĆ©zanne
In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...
Poetry
Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Bjƶrk
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) was a Bengali polymath, best known...
Emily Dickinson – ‘I Can Wade Grief’ (1862)
Emily Dickinson was born on 10 December 1830 in...
James Joyce
Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha
'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...
The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps
WhenĀ UlyssesĀ was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...
Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015
Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...
Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce
With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...
Obituaries
Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77
Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...
Kenzo Takada, the Japanese Designer Who Revolutionised French Fashion, Dies at 81
With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting...
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the Influential Producer and Dub Pioneer, Dies at the Age of 85
Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the charismatic producer and restless pioneer...
Charles Grodin, Star of The Heartbreak Kid and Midnight Run, Dies Aged 86
The actor, author, and talk show host Charles Grodin...
Albums
Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut albumĀ Fanm dāAyiti,...
Behind the Song
Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’
'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early...
Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha
'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...
Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’
Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...
Themes and References in Joanna Newsom’s Sapokanikan
In the music video for 'Sapokanikan', Joanna Newsom saunters...
Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’
'Subterraneans' is theĀ closingĀ song on what has become perhaps David...
Tracks of the Week
Tracks of the Week 17.02.24
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut album Fanm...
Tracks of the Week 10.02.24
From 'Old Shep' and 'Old King' to 'Cracker Jack'...
Tracks of the Week 03.02.24
The creative life of the composer Cergio Prudencio -...
At the Movies
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - From a modern perspective, the original and best film version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three almost seems to lack a final act: when the shakeout comes and the criminals attempt to make their getaway, there is no major chase sequence, limited gunfighting, and the villains for the most part - faced with the ambling steeliness of Walter Matthau's Lieutenant Zachary Garber - prove their own undoing...
Paris, Texas (1984)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - Travis Henderson (Harry Dean Stanton) was introduced against a backdrop of blue skies and sandstone buttes, but his brother Walt (Dean Stockwell) wears a yellow Stetson cap and stands in front of a commercial tower block, which turns out to be painted. He sells billboard signs for a living, but agrees to travel to Terlingua, South Texas, to pick up his brother...
Young Adult (2011)
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(4 out of 4 stars) - Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron), a 37-year-old ghostwriter for a series of young adult novels soon to be cancelled, returns to her small Minnesota hometown, angling to hook up with her old high school flame, who is married and has just become a father. Her attempts at seduction are already inappropriate, but prove much grosser than this, culminating in a blowout at a birthday party...
Risky Business (1983)
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Ā½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Joel (Tom Cruise), a teenager comingĀ towards the end of his timeĀ in high school, lives with his parents in a leafy Chicago suburb. He is good-looking and his parents are wealthy, but they are also demanding, and he subsumesĀ a fluent strain of existential angst with worry over schoolwork and his future prospects. Beyond a litany of tests, he is involved in a Future Enterprises programme...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
ā
ā
ā
ā
(4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongsideĀ The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
World Cinema
We’re the Millers (2013)
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(3 out of 4 stars) - In what sounds like a riff on an old joke, a drug dealer, a stripper, a runaway, and a nerd climb into a camper van south of the border. David Clark (Jason Sudeikis) is a low-level marijuana dealer who finds himself beholden to his supplier, the sleazy businessman Brad Gurdlinger (Ed Helms), when a couple of street hoods make off with his stash. To cover the debt with a little added compensation, David reluctantly agrees to smuggle a 'smidge' of weed from Mexico...
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
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ā
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Ā½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - Five teenagers take a road trip to visit an old family homestead in the musty heart of Texas. The radio plays the news, a grim recitation of industrial and environmental disasters and acts of wanton violence. They discuss astrology, retrograde planets and the malevolent influence of Saturn; stop off at the gravesite of a deceased grandfather amid reports of grave robbing; and after passing a slaughterhouse for beef cattle, they pick up a hitchhiker...
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
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Ā½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - When it comes to the blockbuster action movie, three franchises remain. There is the Marvel Cinematic Universe and other assorted comic book pictures, y'know, for kids; Tom Cruise, most clearly for the ever stellar Mission: Impossible series, wilfully forgetting Jack Reacher but with shoutouts to American Made, Edge of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Top Gun sequel, sure to be a success; and then there's The Rock...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
ā
ā
ā
ā
(4 out of 4 stars) - Instead Renoir produced a bawdy comedy with French airs and graces, which seems to share much in common with so many American films of the late thirties with their loose morals, gender distortions, and hedonistic flushes of romance. The inspirations may have been Marivaux and Beaumarchais, but in style and temperament The Rules of the Game rubs up equally alongsideĀ The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
Cactus Flower (1969)
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Ā½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - More than mere confection, which by nature lies there enticingly and dwindles the more that we eat, and just like the titular cactus which sits on dental assistant Stephanie Dickinson's desk, cannily marking her transformation, Cactus Flower positively blossoms. The third film in three years from director Gene Saks - hot on the heels of two resounding Neil Simon success stories...
Earthy Anecdotes
Earthy Anecdotes: Katharine Hepburn Steals Stephen Sondheim’s Plant
By the turn of the twentieth century, the Turtle...
Earthy Anecdotes: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’s Hellish Dinner Scene
One of the most influential horror movies of all-time,...
Earthy Anecdotes: Alex Ferguson, Mick Harford, And The League That Got Away
In the winter of 1991, Manchester United stood atop...
Earthy Anecdotes: The Premiere of The Rite of Spring
On 29 MayĀ 1913,Ā The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...
Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at MĆ©dan by Paul CĆ©zanne
In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...
Poetry
Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)
Alexander Blok (ŠŠ»ŠµŠŗŃŠ°Š½Š“Ń ŠŠ»Š¾Šŗ) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...
Fyodor Sologub – ‘At Times There Comes a Strange Smell Wafting’
Fyodor Sologub was born Fyodor Kuzmich Teternikov on 1...
‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev
Silentium!
Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream,...
James Joyce
Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits; and the Jesuits and James Joyce
With the election yesterday evening in Rome of former...
Daily Visual 16.06.15: Bloomsday 2015
Bloomsday today in Dublin marks the culmination of a...
Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha
'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...
The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps
WhenĀ UlyssesĀ was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...
Obituaries
Brazilian Architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha Dies at the Age of 92
The Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha died on...
Kenzo Takada, the Japanese Designer Who Revolutionised French Fashion, Dies at 81
With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting...
Dean Stockwell, Star of Blue Velvet and Quantum Leap, Dies at 85 Years Old
The actor Dean Stockwell died of natural causes on...
Charlie Watts, Steadfast Drummer of the Rolling Stones, Dies at the Age of 80
Charlie Watts, the backbone of the Rolling Stones for...
Albums
Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy TseguĆ©-Maryam GuĆØbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut albumĀ Fanm dāAyiti,...
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