A bloody good Valentine gift February 27, 2013 WHEN MY Bloody Valentine announced UK tour dates late last year, few fans regarded it as anything more than the victory lap of the band’s triumphant live reunion in 2008. Fewer would have imagined that they might play not only tracks from the fervently beloved Isn’t Anything and Loveless but unveil new material for the [...]
David Bowie, the man who made it normal to be weird, still has the ability to shock 30 years after his heyday February 27, 2013 ON 8 January this year, David Bowie marked his 66th birthday with a surprise new single. Silently uploaded onto the internet in the middle of the night, Where Are We Now? was released with no accompanying fanfare. There was no publicity campaign and no one saw it coming. The quietness that characterised its arrival was [...]
Booker and Oscar marriage is on the rocks February 27, 2013 IN THE 90s, Oscar couldn’t get enough of Booker. The English Patient, Schindler’s List and The Remains of the Day all proved irresistible to both Booker Prize juries and voters of the Academy Awards Since then though, the marriage of literary merit and Hollywood emotion hasn’t been quite so harmonious. Stuck in development hell for [...]
An inside look at the Cheney and Rummy show February 27, 2013 MICHAEL MOORE has a lot to answer for. His success has precipitated a flurry of documentary polemics. Right wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza’s 2016: Obama’s America was a huge hit with Fox News fans (including Fox’s owner, Rupert Murdoch). Using bombastic rhetoric and questionable scholarship, it aimed to show the “roots of Obama’s rage”, creating what [...]
Match made in Heaven February 27, 2013 MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM is Britain’s most intriguing film- maker. Averaging a movie a year, he’s made a sci-fi love story (Code 46), one the most sexually explicit mainstream films ever released (9 Songs) and a trio of increasingly loose adaptations of Thomas Hardy novels. And when Hardy doesn’t inspire, he’s got Steve Coogan. The pair have [...]
Review: Apero at the Ampersand February 26, 2013 Apero has fish is to die for, if you don’t mind the charmingly chaotic atmosphere, says Steve Dinneen APERO @ AMPERSAND; 10 Harrington Road, SW7 3ER; tel: 020 7589 5895 FOOD **** SERVICE *** Value **** Cost per person with wine: £50 A few years ago I was wandering through Kreuzberg, before it was completely [...]
How a former hedgie manager is challenging the Bordeaux status quo February 26, 2013 THE BOTTLE OPENER I’m delighted to say I spent last Monday evening drinking fine Claret with a revolutionary. Not that Arnaud Christiaens, a polished Belgian former hedge fund manager, is your usual rebel. But with his new venture Le Secret des Grands Chefs, he is setting out to turn the accepted order of things in [...]
Review: Mama February 26, 2013 FILM MAMA Cert 15 *** AFTER producing the deliciously terrifying The Orphanage and directing the superb horror fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth, you would bet your house on Guillermo del Toro nailing what is essentially a stripped down, monster-in-the-house horror movie. This is why I’m not a gambling man. It starts off convincingly enough. The plot – [...]
Review: Money The Game Show February 26, 2013 In Clare Duffy’s new play, Money The Game Show, two ex-bankers, Queenie and Casino (Lucy Ellinson and Brian Ferguson), explain the financial crisis through a series of audience participation games. Two halves of the audience face each other and in the centre is a platform, complete with cartoon noises and colourful flashing lights that combine [...]
Float through the traffic in the E300 February 25, 2013 Mercedes-Benz’s latest hybrid executive saloon is so smooth it is more magic carpet than automobile Traditionally, delivering high fuel economy hasn’t been a primary focus for large executive cars. But the times they are a-changin’. Car manufacturers know they need to provide cleaner and more efficient vehicles to appease European regulators and discourage buyers from [...]