Tony Bevan at Ben Brown Fine Arts: The tree of life, death and the mind November 23, 2014 Painter Tony Bevan speaks ahead of his show at Ben Brown Fine Arts. Tony Bevan established a name for himself with blood-coloured self-portraits that snarled and gurned and twisted into the white of the canvas. Meeting him today, you’d be forgiven for asking, where are the devilish flared nostrils, the vast egg cranium [...]
Photography review: World Press Photo 2014 November 21, 2014 Royal Festival Hall | ★★★★☆ The World Press Photograph of the Year has been running since 1955, with the numbers of entries increasing steadily. For this year’s competition a record-breaking 5,754 photographers from 132 countries submitted 98,671 pictures, with subjects ranging from the Boston Marathon bombing to the collapse of the Rana Plaza in [...]
Theatre review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers November 21, 2014 Olivier Theatre | ★★★☆☆ The dirtiest thing in the Annawadi slum is the language. Above the din of arriving and departing planes (Annawadi is located right next to Mumbai airport) millions of slum-dwellers bicker, joke and philosophise in words as colourful as the advertising hoardings above their heads. American author Katherine Boo depicted [...]
Film review: Get On Up November 21, 2014 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ Many films don’t feature a single scene in which two female characters talk about something other than a man. I’m not sure this film features a single scene in which any two characters talk about something other than James Brown. Like many biopics, Get On Up subscribes to [...]
Film review: The Homesman November 21, 2014 Cert 15 | ★★★☆☆ Many an American fictional character has dreamed a dream of loading up the wagon and heading way out west to roll the dice on the frontier. It says much of The Homesman’s contrarian spirit that it does the reverse. In his second directorial outing, Tommy Lee Jones trudges backwards [...]
Film review: The Hunger Games – Mockingjay Part I November 20, 2014 Cert 12a | ★★★☆☆ So what happens now The Hunger Games are over? The previous two instalments of the franchise revolved around these Battle Royale-style tournaments, in which two “tributes” from each district of dystopia Panem fought to the death in a grisly reality TV show devised by a fascist regime as a pretty [...]
Something for the weekend November 20, 2014 For a festive treat: winter wonderland Ice rink? Check. Fun fair? Check. 200 fairy-lit Bavarian wooden chalets? Check. Winter Wonderland, London’s most extravagantly christmassy spectacle, returns to Hyde Park today. Open every day from 10am-10pm. For a Christmas ride: Tally ho! cycle tour Tally Ho! have organised a cycle ride around all London’s best Christmas [...]
Photography review: Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize November 14, 2014 National Portrait Gallery | ★★★★☆ The National Portrait Gallery’s immensely popular Taylor Wessing portrait prize exhibition is back. This week it was announced that the winning image was fashion photographer David Titlow’s atmospheric portrait of his baby son interacting with a dog. The judges selected the image from over 4,000 submissions from 1,793 photographers. [...]
Theatre review: Not About Heroes at Trafalgar Studios November 14, 2014 Trafalgar Studios 2 | ★★★★☆ In a life otherwise blighted by misfortune, Wilfred Owen had one show-stopping moment of luck. When forced to take leave from the front line because of shell-shock in 1917, he happened to be referred to Craiglockhart War Hospital at the same time that established celebrity poet Siegfried Sassoon was interned there. [...]
Would a Miami porn baron hang an Allen Jones painting in his sex dungeon? November 14, 2014 Royal Academy★★☆☆☆ If tragedy plus time equals comedy, what does sexism plus time equal – satire? Mainstream acceptability? This has been the strange fate of Allen Jones, an artist whose work once prompted the hurling of smoke bombs outside the ICA, but who now gets a genteel Royal Academy retrospective without even a hint of [...]