Revisit the very swinging 60s March 22, 2012 DANISH STYLE SOFA £449 FROM MADE This olive green Scandinavian-inspired sofa will add an air of effortless cool to your living room. made.com 60S STYLE PHONE £99 FROM JOHN LEWIS In an age of mobile phones, all landlines are pretty retro. Go the whole hog with this bright orange number. johnlewis.com CHROME ARMCHAIR £325 FROM [...]
The Master and Margarita: Surreal, nightmarish and brilliant March 22, 2012 THE MASTER AND MARGARITA | The Barbican | ★★★★★ Cowardice is the worst sin” is a phrase often repeated in Mikhail Bulgakov’s hallucinatory satire The Master and Margarita. And cowardice is certainly not an accusation that can be levelled at Complicite’s production – it is a bold, cacophonous, at times baffling play that never flinches [...]
GOING OUT March 22, 2012 The new Cinnamon Club Soho opens this week on the old Bar Red site on Kingly street. This is the third establishment from executive chef Vivek Singh who brought you the original Cinnamon Club in Westminster and the more contemporary Cinnamon Kitchen in the City. This time they have a younger, cheekier outlook and are [...]
Battle Royal comes to America in this terrifying post-apocalyptic thriller March 22, 2012 Film THE HUNGER GAMES 12A **** Every year in post-apocalypse North America, the Capitol of the nation of Palem forces the outer districts to send two teenagers as “tributes” to The Hunger Games. Half punishment for a failed up-rising, half reality show, The Hunger Games are an annual televised fight to the death where the [...]
Gangster saga hits right note March 22, 2012 Film WILD BILL Cert: 15 **** THIS isn’t your average East End gangster saga. Wild Bill is an impressively subtle, no-nonsense debut from first-time director Dexter Fletcher, centring around Bill Hayward (Charlie Creed-Miles), a troubled guy coming out of prison, trying to live the good life while still tangled up in his murky past. It [...]
Navy SEAL film plays like a bad recruitment video. These guys may deserve a great movie but this ain’t it March 22, 2012 Film ACT OF VALOUR Cert: 12A * Starring active duty US Navy SEALs alongside a smattering of actors, this fictionalised version of real operations follows the Bandito Platoon on a straightforward mission that leads to a terrorist conspiracy of unimaginable proportions. Following extensive interviews with the troops, directors Mike McCoy and Scott Waugh took five [...]
Iranian director shows what can be done with one man and his iPhone in this poignant study March 22, 2012 Film THIS IS NOT A FILM Cert: U **** There aren’t many films made partially on an iPhone and smuggled into the Cannes Film Festival in a cake. Banned for 20 years from film-making and sentenced to 6 years in prison after supporting the opposition during the Iranian elections in 2009, this documentary follows renowned [...]
iPad, I saw, I conquered March 21, 2012 1080P HD VIDEO The new iPad’s camera is capable of shooting quality high definition video. If you’re filming in good light, the results can be pretty astonishing. It has an image stabiliser to reduce “wobble”. The new screen also makes video playback noticeably better “THAT” SCREEN The new iPad’s biggest selling point is its retina [...]
Don’t blame Twitter for the awfulness of human beings March 21, 2012 Social media generally means you can get away with seeing less of people, which is great, because most people are unbearably awful. It also means you can carefully vet the people you interact with and block them at will, on a whim, just for the hell of it. You can pretend to be erudite and [...]
THREE OF THE BEST HD APPS FOR YOUR NEW IPAD March 21, 2012 BAREFOOT WORLD ATLAS (£5.49) This app is ostensibly an educational tool for children, although it’s so much fun it’s probably wasted on them. It features a 3D globe you can scroll around, discovering cities, historical sights and interesting facts about the world. It makes great use of the retina screen, with crisp, vivid colours as [...]