Muddy Waters’ son keeps the blues alive in the City May 15, 2014 Mud Morganfield is back in town for the launch of Blues Kitchen Shoreditch – Alex Dymoke caught up with him FINALLY the square mile finally has a place to exorcise those blues. Last night Mud Morganfield was on hand to mark the opening of the Blues Kitchen Shoreditch, a new restaurant and music venue metres from [...]
How comics reflect a very British psyche May 12, 2014 ARTS COMICS UNMASKED British Library | By Steve Dinneen Four Stars FOR AN art form that is seen as quintessentially American, we Brits have a disproportionately large influence on the world of comics. It wasn’t always so: for decades our publications evolved as largely insular, unmistakeably British alternatives to the musclebound US titles. But in [...]
A violent eruption of camp madness May 1, 2014 FILM POMPEII 3D Cert 12a Two Stars THE DESTRUCTION of Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried under the ash of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, has long held a grip on the public imagination. Only eight months ago, tickets sold out in advance for the British Museum’s exhibition Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, [...]
Baddiel: party like it isn’t 1999 May 1, 2014 COMEDY FAME: NOT THE MUSICAL Menier Chocolate Factory Four Stars REMEMBER David Baddiel? Of course you do. He did The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Fantasy Football League, Baddiel and Skinner, and the Euro96 anthem Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home). After a 15 year break, and aged almost 50, he is back with stand-up, reflections on fame [...]
An unnecessary, poorly-animated Tarzan adaptation May 1, 2014 FILM TARZAN 3D Cert PG Two Stars SINCE Edgar Rice Burroughs’ first Tarzan story in 1912, the character has been played or voiced by over 20 actors, including Herman Brix, Buster Carabbe and the late, great, five time Olympic gold medal winning Johnny Weissmüller who played the iconic jungle-dweller between the wars. To this illustrious [...]
Hernan Bas: the best young painter in the world? May 1, 2014 ART HERNAN BAS: MEMPHIS LIVING Victoria Miro Five Stars FLORIDIAN artist Hernan Bas’ early paintings were richly detailed and dimly lit with knotty vegetation and winding rivers, innocent adolescents in the foreground and erotic encounters in the shadows. They were his attempt to replicate the deep imaginative immersion of the novels and poems he fell [...]
Donmar Privacy play reveals all April 28, 2014 THEATRE PRIVACY Donmar Warehouse | By Alex Dymoke Four Stars “IN 21 YEARS of invading people’s privacy I’ve never found anybody doing any good… Privacy is for paedos. Privacy is evil.” This speech by former News of the World hack Paul McMullan delivered to the Leveson inquiry is quoted verbatim in the first act of [...]
10-week fitness challenge | The get-fit diary of an out-of-shape office worker April 28, 2014 Steve is undertaking a 10 week “total body transformation” programme with No.1 Fitness, which involves four sessions a week at the gym, a strictly-controlled diet and absolutely no alcohol under any circumstances whatsoever (not even a little bit, just to take the edge off…). Here’s how it’s going: The last fortnight has been tough. I’m [...]
Exhibition of the decade so far April 21, 2014 ART HENRI MATISSE: THE CUT-OUTS Tate Modern Five Stars IT’S A moving story: a great painter whose health is failing him moves into the stage of life we usually associate with greyness and discovers colour. A 72-year-old Matisse was forced to lay down his brush after a cancer operation in 1941, but this led him [...]
Spider-Man entertains but fails to amaze April 21, 2014 FILM AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 Cert 12A Three Stars MARC Webb’s second installment of the re-booted Spider-Man franchise feels like a throwback to the super-hero movies of a decade ago – the first Hulk, Bryan Singer’s X-Men movies, Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil. It’s all spectacle, explosions and a dash of romance. It’s melodramatic rather than dark, [...]