James Ensor at the Royal Academy: a mercurial painter of the grotesque October 27, 2016 In the paintings of James Ensor, life is dour and murky while death is a riot of colour and expressive brush-strokes. In one of the first pieces in the Royal Academy’s exhibition two women sit taking afternoon tea (Afternoon in Ostend, 1881) in an oppressively brown room, as if the bourgeois scene is so interminably [...]
Doctor Strange review: The tightest, funniest, most refreshing super-hero movie in years October 27, 2016 While all around super-hero franchises are collapsing under their own grotesque weight – Batman v Superman, X-Men Apocalypse, Suicide Squad – Marvel stands alone in its uncanny ability to churn out hit after hit. With Doctor Strange, it’s just showing off. Its lead character is a beloved but relatively fringe inhabitant of the Marvel Universe, [...]
A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer review: Cancer cells dance around inflatable tumours in this musical about disease October 27, 2016 A musical in which colourful cancer cells fart about on stage like rejected Saturday morning cartoon characters, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is an unexpectedly jazzy and frenetic show. It dissects and digests the bleak world of terminal illness with a song and a dance, as tumours slowly emerge from the stage [...]
The Big Bang 30 years on: How the City went from bowler hats and liquid lunches to smartphones and tossed salads October 26, 2016 There’s now a whole generation of City workers – and City A.M. readers – who weren’t even born when the markets were deregulated back in 1986. Standing in Leadenhall Market on a week-day afternoon, they could be forgiven for thinking the City hadn’t changed all that much over the last 30 years. Hundreds of besuited [...]
Start with a blank canvas: How to invest in the art market October 26, 2016 For years the idea of purchasing art as an investment was frowned upon by purists in the art world – the two should be separate, like church and state. Art as investment is certainly not for everyone: the market is quite illiquid, prices can be volatile, and storage costs can outweigh profits. But as investors [...]
Here’s what happened on the third episode of The Apprentice October 21, 2016 In last night's episode, Lord Sugar gave the candidates a food task, meaning everybody messed around in a kitchen for half the episode. Even though they were making sweets, no one called their brand “Lord Sugar”, proving none of them really have what it takes to win. Although the phrase “business acumen” was only used twice, so [...]
Ouija 2: Origin of Evil review – Sparsely-used jump scares and engaging performances make this horror film a good choice for Halloween October 20, 2016 As Oscar Wilde says, people become violent when they’re surrounded by hideous wallpaper. Perhaps that’s why so many horror films these days are set in the late 60s against a horrifying backdrop of flocked curtains and flicky hairdos. That’s where this prequel to 2014’s Ouija travels to, anyway, right back to the supernatural board game’s [...]
In Pursuit of Silence: a blissfully quiet film about our noisy world October 20, 2016 This intriguing, quiet documentary explores the effect our noisy society has on our well-being. Filmmaker Patrick Shen talks to various, disparate people including monks, authors and explorers to discuss the benefits of having space to reflect. Initially feeling like a pitch for a wellness retreat, his film actually opens up an interesting discussion about how [...]
Oil at the Almeida is a challenging, ambitious play about the history of the oil business October 20, 2016 Ella Hickson’s hugely ambitious new play knits together a sprawling 160 year geo-political soap-opera with a touching – but never candy-coated – story about a mother and daughter. Almost unfathomably dense – six years in the writing – it follows the trajectory of the oil industry from its early days as an energy source of [...]
The Dresser at the Duke of York Theatre: a savage but loving tribute to ham theatre October 20, 2016 Dementia, Shakespeare and the Blitz collide gloriously in Ronald Harwood’s tragicomedy The Dresser. Set in wartime 1940s, it tells the tale of a deteriorating actor known as “Sir” and the theatre’s dresser, Norman, whose job it is to coax and bully the ailing grandee through his 227th rendition of King Lear. A reflection on Harwood's [...]