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Albums
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut album Fanm d’Ayiti,...
Behind the Song
Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha
'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...
Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’
Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an...
Behind the Song: David Bowie – ‘Subterraneans’
'Subterraneans' is the closing song on what has become perhaps David...
Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’
'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early...
Behind the Song: Van Morrison – ‘Crazy Love’
'Crazy Love' is the third track from Moondance, Van...
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
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - On the morning of Saint Valentine's Day, 1900, the schoolgirls boarding at Appleyard College prepare for a day picnicking at Hanging Rock. In raptures they recite poetry from the Valentine's cards they have presumably sent one another; they put on their muslin dresses, and in a cross between a balletic embrace and an evolutionary procession, they awkwardly help each other with their corsets; and then they are off, but at the rock three of them vanish...
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)
★½ (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...
Amazing Grace (2018)
★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - At the height of her powers, Aretha Franklin went to church: to the New Temple Missionary Baptist in Los Angeles for two nights in January 1972, where she intended to return to her roots with a live recording of gospel music. The ensuing double album, Amazing Grace, would go double platinum, and it remains the best-selling record of her long and storied career. The acclaimed film director Sydney Pollack was tasked with shooting the performance for a feature...
Paris, Texas (1984)
★★★★ (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...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
★★★★ (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 alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
World Cinema
Paris, Texas (1984)
★★★★ (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...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
★★★★ (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 alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
The Assassin (2015)
★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - In 9th century China, the weakened Tang Dynasty struggles to retain control over its militarised province of Weibo. Nie Yinniang (Shu Qi) has been trained by the nun Jiaxin (Fang-Yi Sheu) to assassinate corrupt government officials, but though she possesses all of the art, she cannot bring herself to kill a man as he sits cradling his sleeping son. So Jiaxin, who has raised Yinniang from the age of ten, sets her charge a more personal task...
John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)
★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - The hotly anticipated follow-up to what has already become a cult classic, in John Wick: Chapter 2 our eponymous hero goes to Rome, as the series curiously begins taking cues from Dan Brown and all things Da Vinci. There's a dash of Underworld mixed in there too: this is a world where neon store fronts, modern art installations, subways and the original film's streamlined desire for vengeance butt up against cobbled streets and catacombs...
Hard Eight (1996)
★★★★ (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...
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 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...
Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne
In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...
Poetry
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,...
Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)
Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...
James Joyce
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...
The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps
When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...
Behind the Song: ‘M’appari’ from Friedrich von Flotow’s Martha
'M'appari' is the best known name for the central...
Obituaries
Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77
Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, the Influential Producer and Dub Pioneer, Dies at the Age of 85
Lee 'Scratch' Perry, the charismatic producer and restless pioneer...
Juliette Gréco, Doyenne of the French Chanson, Dies at 93
Juliette Gréco, doyenne of the French chanson, died on...
Jean-Paul Belmondo, the Face of the French New Wave, Dies At the Age of 88
Jean-Paul Belmondo, the actor whose crooked nose and raffish...
Albums
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut album Fanm d’Ayiti,...
Behind the Song
Behind the Song: Leonore Overture, ‘Farewell Amanda’, ‘One Night’
Ludwig van Beethoven - Leonore Overture No. 1, Op....
Behind the Song: Charles Mingus – ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’
Charles Mingus wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' as an...
Behind the Song: Robyn – ‘Be Mine!’
Beginning her career in pop music at the age...
Behind the Song: Animal Collective – ‘Summertime Clothes’
Animal Collective's eighth studio album, Merriweather Post Pavilion, was...
Behind the Song: Chuck Berry – ‘You Can’t Catch Me’
'You Can't Catch Me', one of Chuck Berry's early...
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
Cactus Flower (1969)
★★★½ (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...
Teen Wolf (1985)
★½ (1.5 out of 4 stars) - It would be naive to suggest that things were simpler back in the 1980s, but when it came to the movie preferences of adolescent males, they were less demanding at least. True it was the era of high concept film, of space operas and extra-terrestrials and all-action archaeologists, of darkening or neon-clad dystopias, of robots and terminators, of zombies and ghosts and gremlins...
Toni Erdmann (2016)
★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Winfried Conradi is so given to practical jokes that he practically depends on them. When he opens the door of his home in the spa town of Aachen, he regales the postman with an elaborate deception featuring look-alike brothers, prison terms, erotic magazines, and mail bombs, tipping the postman for any distress accrued and to make amends for his own strange excesses. He carries a pair of false teeth...
Virgin Mountain (2015)
★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - Fúsi (Gunnar Jónsson) is forty-three years old and a virgin, still living at home with his mother. He spends his days working as a baggage handler at Keflavik airport, his evenings wargaming with his friend Mörður (Sigurjón Kjartansson), as together they painstakingly recreate the Battle of El Alamein, and each Friday he orders Pad Thai and eats cloistered in the same corner of the same restaurant...
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
★★★★ (4 out of 4 stars) - Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) owns a warehouse which manufactures and sells novelty goods - 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...
World Cinema
Kalifornia (1993)
★★½ (2.5 out of 4 stars) - Brian and Carrie plan to drive from their home of Louisville, Kentucky to the golden state of California, stopping off at renowned murder spots along the way. Brian hopes to gain material for his book, with Carrie providing the photographic illustration. To top up their gas-guzzling Lincoln Continental, their notice for a ride share is answered by a curious couple, the childlike Adele Corners and her ragged minder Early Grayce...
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
★★★ (3 out of 4 stars) - In February 1969 in Hollywood, fading television star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) frequents bars and gets ferried around by his old stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Booth lives in a trailer with his pit bull Brandy, in an empty lot behind the drive-in in Van Nuys, but Dalton keeps up appearances with a luxury home in Beverly Crest overlooking Beverly Hills...
Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
★★★½ (3.5 out of 4 stars) - On the morning of Saint Valentine's Day, 1900, the schoolgirls boarding at Appleyard College prepare for a day picnicking at Hanging Rock. In raptures they recite poetry from the Valentine's cards they have presumably sent one another; they put on their muslin dresses, and in a cross between a balletic embrace and an evolutionary procession, they awkwardly help each other with their corsets; and then they are off, but at the rock three of them vanish...
The Rules of the Game (1939)
★★★★ (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 alongside The Philadelphia Story and the screwball comedies of Howard Hawks.
Enola Holmes (2020)
★★ (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 May 1913, The Rite of Spring, the ballet and...
Earthy Anecdotes: Zola’s House at Médan by Paul Cézanne
In Banks of the Marne by the French artist...
Poetry
‘Silentium!’ by Fyodor Tyutchev
Silentium!
Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream,...
Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore’ (1912)
Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of...
Rabindranath Tagore, E. E. Cummings; Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Björk
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
The Homeric Parallel in Ulysses: Joyce, Nabokov, and Homer in Maps
When Ulysses was published on 2 February, 1922, it was the...
Joyce, Nabokov, and Dirty Books: The Publications of Ulysses, Haveth Childers Everywhere, and Lolita
With Ezra Pound acting as intermediary, from the spring of...
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...
Obituaries
Kenzo Takada, the Japanese Designer Who Revolutionised French Fashion, Dies at 81
With the wet weather and surging coronavirus already putting...
Norm Macdonald Used To Think His Life Was Incomplete. Now It’s Finished.
Norm Macdonald, the comedian whose mischievous glint and deadpan...
Biz Markie, the Clown Prince of Hip Hop, Dies at 57 Years Old
The rapper, DJ, and record producer Biz Markie died...
Toots Hibbert, Reggae Pioneer and Lead Vocalist of the Maytals, Dies Aged 77
Toots Hibbert, the pioneering reggae musician who imbued his...
Albums
Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou – Souvenirs
The piano style of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou - a...
Nathalie Joachim – Ki moun ou ye
For the follow-up to her Grammy-nominated debut album Fanm d’Ayiti,...
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