Wish List at the Royal Court peers inside the warehouse of online retailers like Amazon January 17, 2017 A barely concealed swipe at the working practices of big online retailers, Wish List tells the story of a young woman caring for her OCD-afflicted brother while struggling to make ends meet at her warehouse packaging job. Tamsin’s (Erin Doherty) jittery existence involves trying (and failing) to meet her impossible packaging quota, as a relentless [...]
FiSahara takes place under the baking heat of the African sun. Alex Dudok de Wit finds an event unlike any other January 16, 2017 There’s a territory sandwiched between Morocco and Mauritania, divided from the former in atlases by a dotted line, that carries the opaque name of Western Sahara. You might occasionally spot footage of it on the news, grainy shots of a sand wall lined with landmines and Moroccan soldiers, although most will struggle to place it [...]
The Kite Runner at Wyndham’s Theatre is competent and compelling but never really takes off January 12, 2017 If you weren’t content with only a book and a film, now The Kite Runner has been turned into a West End play. Fresh from a tour of the UK, this remarkably stripped back production could have done with a little beefing up now it’s found a stable home for a few months. The vast, [...]
La La Land review: Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone star in this giddy, joyous tale of young love in the big city January 12, 2017 The unanimous backslap that greeted La La Land at the Golden Globes last week has only reinforced the idea that Hollywood is head-over-heels, all-weekend-in-bed, marriage-and-babies in love with itself. And why not when it can churn out hits like this. La La Land is entirely deserving of its praise, and so much more than a [...]
Live By Night film review: Ben Affleck’s gangster epic can’t match its lofty aspirations January 12, 2017 For his fourth outing behind the camera, Ben Affleck sets his sights on the gangster epic, a genre that for many is the yardstick against which directorial greatness is measured. Returning once again to Boston (three of his four movies as director have been shot in the state where he grew up), Affleck also screen-writes, [...]
BU21 play review: London terror drama justifies transfer to Trafalgar Studios January 12, 2017 A plane explodes over West London. It’s been shot, we are told, by a handheld missile launched somewhere in Vauxhall. The wreckage kills hundreds, injures hundreds more, and reduces most of Fulham to rubble. Part of the force of Stuart Slade’s courageous, bitterly funny play comes from its plausibility – there is a sense, morbid [...]
Manchester by the Sea starring Casey Affleck deserves its Oscar buzz January 12, 2017 Regular Scorsese collaborator Kenneth Lonergan’s first film in five years has become an Oscar front runner, with rapturous receptions on the film festival circuit and a win at last weekend’s Golden Globes. Set in the titular Massachusetts town, a restrained, quiet handy man (Casey Affleck) returns to his former home in the aftermath of his [...]
Laurence King, founder of the eponymous publisher, talks adult colouring books, soviets, Ezra Pound and anti-digital January 9, 2017 "We caused a shortage of felt pens in Brazil,” says Laurence King, founder of Laurence King Publishing, the creator of the original adult colouring book that sparked the recent craze. In 2013, the firm published the Secret Garden, illustrated by Johanna Basford. In the first two years, it sold 250,000 copies. “It was then we became [...]
Here’s our pick of 2017’s best upcoming films January 5, 2017 Blade Runner 2049 Dir. Denis Villeneuve, out late 2017 Set thirty years after the events of Ridley Scott’s seminal science-fiction classic, Blade Runner 2049 stars Ryan Gosling as the wet-behind-the-ears replicant hunter tasked with tracking down a missing Rick Deckard, played by the unknowable force of nature that keeps Harrison Ford’s seemingly immortal body in [...]
Here are the most highly-anticipated art exhibitions coming up in London in 2017 January 5, 2017 Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! Serpentine Gallery: 8 June to 10 September The uncharacteristically modest Grayson Perry returns to the Serpentine Gallery this summer to present The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, a new collection that explores classic themes of masculinity, contemporary culture and art galleries themselves. The Turner Prize winning artist [...]