Live action Halo is finally here – but is it any good? July 4, 2022 A live action adaptation of the Halo game franchise has been in the works almost since the Xbox first launched. Peter Jackson, Guillermo Del Toro and Neill Blomkamp are among the names to have attempted a feature film in the 2000s, while this Steven Spielberg-produced version was first announced in 2013. The series finally arrives [...]
The Black Phone is a creepy reunion for Derrickson and Hawke July 4, 2022 Having acrimoniously parted ways with the Doctor Strange franchise, director Scott Derrickson goes back to his horror roots with The Black Phone, a cleverly pitched movie based on a short story by Joe Hill (the pen name of Stephen King’s son). Set in the late 70s, Mason Thames plays Finney, a young man who becomes [...]
In the Black Fantastic is the most exciting exhibition of the year July 4, 2022 From the moment you enter In the Black Fantastic, the blockbuster new exhibition at the Hayward gallery, you can tell it’s something special. A giant sculpture made up of interlinking forearms stacked to the rafters snakes dramatically across the main concourse; to your left an entire wall is taken up by a kaleidoscopic collage filled [...]
Inside the brilliantly creative Glastonbury Theatre & Circus fields June 28, 2022 It’s not all about Macca and Billie Eilish, don’t you know? Some of Glastonbury’s best areas involve no music at all. For instance, the Theatre & Circus fields are some of the festival’s oldest areas, where performers surprise punters with spontaneous shows as they pass by, and there are full-scale acrobatics pieces that you’d pay [...]
Glastonbury 2022: Protest and celebration as festival roars back June 27, 2022 It’s been an anxious three years for Glastonbury, but this weekend the most important and influential of the UK’s music festivals, and one of the most essential stages in the world, returned for the first time since 2019. Did it rain? Of course it did – but only a little bit. Late afternoon crowds on [...]
Cost Of Living: Can A New Job Solve The Problem? June 26, 2022 Escalating costs are leaving many of us out of pocket. A new piece of research from networking group People Like Us and Censuswide has revealed that spiraling costs are affecting a huge segment of the UK workforce. Forty-nine percent of workers say they are now living from pay cheque to pay cheque, and 53% say [...]
A Doll’s House Part 2 at the Donmar is a welcome sequel to Ibsen’s classic June 24, 2022 A visit to A Doll’s House Part 2 prompts a question – why can’t we leave Nora alone? Lucas Hnath’s play at the Donmar Warehouse is just the latest in a long line of spinoffs based on Ibsen’s quintessential feminist text. The original A Doll’s House famously ends with Nora leaving her husband, Torvald, and, more [...]
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis is a joyous celebration of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll June 24, 2022 The life and times of Elvis Presley have been dramatised often over the years, from TV biopics to surreal fictional accounts such as 2002’s Bubba Ho-Tep. But a big budget biopic of one of the 20th century’s most famous figures has never been attempted until now. Directed by Baz Luhrmann with an eye-catching cast, Elvis [...]
That Is Not Who I Am at the Royal Court is weird and brilliant June 24, 2022 All is not what it seems in the Royal Court’s That Is Not Who I Am, an “internet thriller” directed by security industry veteran Dave Davidson. For a start, that isn’t really the name of the play – it’s called Rapture – and Dave Davidson doesn’t exist. It’s a bold gambit. From the outset the [...]
Jurassic Park’s sound designer reveals the secret sounds of the dinosaurs June 17, 2022 For sound designer Al Nelson, jobs don’t come much bigger than Jurassic Park. When the technician started out in the industry in the late nineties, one of his first big jobs was The Lost World, Steven Spielberg’s follow-up to Jurassic Park, the film which birthed the seismic dinosaur franchise. In the 25 years since, Nelson [...]