Gunpowder Milkshake – Karen Gillan’s action comedy is great fun September 20, 2021 While she may be better known as a supporting player in the Jumanji and Marvel franchises, Karen Gillan has offered some impressive lead performances on the big screen. She impressed as the director and star of 2018’s overlooked drama The Party’s Just Beginning, and in the David Dastmalchian-written All Creatures Here Below. This week, she [...]
Camp Siegfried at the Old Vic: As bright and bouncy as brainwashing gets September 20, 2021 A true story about the indoctrination of American teenagers into fascism sounds like a heavy evening of theatre, but the Old Vic’s Camp Siegfried is as bright and bouncy as brainwashing gets. Set in the titular Long Island summer camp in 1938, it follows two unnamed teenagers who meet on the outskirts of a dance [...]
Flower power: 2021 RHS Botanical Art & Photography Show at the Saatchi Gallery September 18, 2021 Botanical illustrations have a somewhat unfair association with geriatric pastimes and biology textbooks. In a new exhibition at Chelsea’s Saatchi Gallery, the Royal Horticultural Society brings a fresh spin on the form by grouping a 200-strong selection of paintings, drawings, and photographs that showcase the diversity of flora. The product of an open call, works [...]
Is God Is at The Royal Court: A fireball of rage and guilt September 17, 2021 A fireball of rage and guilt, Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is is a modern-day biblical epic on a small scale. It’s a play that actively shirks categorisation, inviting comparisons to both the Old Testament and the trappings of Jacobean drama, but also to Spaghetti Westerns, Afropunk, and hip-hop. The play begins with fire, both literally, [...]
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2021 is the best in years September 17, 2021 British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, coordinator of the 253rd Royal Academy Summer Exhibition has managed something extraordinary: he’s created a show that actually makes sense. Where the Summer Exhibition – once again shunted to the autumn thanks to Covid – is usually a maddening, overwhelming jumble of artworks, this year there’s a thread of urgency and [...]
Try fine German wine at fabulous Somerset House September 16, 2021 Eva Fricke’s wines are much sought-after, often going for as much as £3,000 per half-bottle at auction. Her Lorcher Krone Riesling Trockenbeerenauslese 2019 is the first wine to score 100 points from the respected American publication The Wine Advocate. Only eighteen bottles are in existence. Now you can sample some of her wares alongside those [...]
Prisoners of The Ghostland – more Nicolas Cage madness September 15, 2021 The poster for Prisoners of The Ghostland features a surprising quote – not from a critic or an enthusiastic viewer, but from the star Nicolas Cage himself, who calls it “The Wildest Movie I’ve Ever Made”. When you consider some of the offbeat choices the Oscar winner has made, that’s a powerful claim. He plays [...]
Rose Plays Julie review: A tense exploration of trauma September 14, 2021 Many films are about delving into the deep, murky lake of a character’s past, but few do it as intensely, or as uniquely, as this week’s Rose Plays Julie. Directed Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor, collectively known as the creative partnership Desperate Optimists, Anne Skelly plays Rose, a young Irish woman training to be a [...]
Booze like Bond at this immersive dining experience September 14, 2021 Monte Carlo, the French Riviera, New Orleans, the Caribbean: these are the places we associate with James Bond. Portobello Road, not so much. But this stands to change, for over the next few weeks the bohemian enclave of Notting Hill will be aswarm with Sunspel polo shirts, Persol eyewear, Goodyear-welted Crockett and Jones Norwich boots, [...]
60 Seconds With… Fashion guru and placemaker Yasmin Jones-Henry September 14, 2021 Yasmin Jones-Henry works in the space where fashion meets finance, and where culture meets commerce. She has made her name describing the crucial role culture can play for the new generation of investors, and putting forward the business case for diversity in the fashion and culture sectors. Through her work with Futurecity, a ‘placemaking agency’, [...]