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, [...]
No punch in Thompson and Brosnan rom-com April 21, 2014 FILM THE LOVE PUNCH Cert 12A Two Stars IT’S UNCLEAR why this film is called The Love Punch. The title is never mentioned, no one drinks any punch and it isn’t really about love. Richard (Pierce Brosnan) owns an investment firm that’s bankrupted by a dodgy, cackling Frenchman. Assets crippled, Richard rushes to ex-wife Kate [...]
Incest is best in this Cheek By Jowl production April 21, 2014 THEATRE ‘TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE Barbican Four Stars CHEEK By Jowl’s production of John Ford’s 1633 play ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore rips some of the flesh from the original but preserves its darkly beating heart. Condensed into an intense interval-less two hours, it’s a bloody collision of taboos lit up by a sparkling [...]
10-week fitness challenge | The get-fit diary of an out-of-shape office worker April 21, 2014 Steve is undertaking a 10 week “total body transformation” programme with No.1 Fitness, which involves four sessions at the gym a week, 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: I’VE never been a fit man. I [...]
A thrilling ride if you can stomach the violence April 13, 2014 FILM THE RAID 2: BERANDAL Cert 18 | By Alex Dymoke Three Stars TWO and a half hours? 150 minutes? That’s more like a war of attrition than a “raid”. More western front than embassy siege. Still, Indonesian martial arts extravaganza The Raid 2 flies by quicker than most films half its length, thanks mainly [...]
Pangaea is a transcontinental hotchpotch April 13, 2014 ART PANGAEA Saatchi Gallery | By Joseph Funnell Two Stars SINCE moving to its Chelsea residence in 2008, Charles Saatchi’s eponymous gallery has often grouped artworks by country or region. But with Saatchi having scoured every corner of the earth for big art bounty, London has been left wondering where the gallery has left to [...]