ARTS ROUND-UP January 12, 2012 STAR CROSSED LOVERS RETURN HOME Kenneth MacMillan’s Romeo & Juliet began at the Royal Opera House this week. The performance hangs on its leads Carlos Acosta and Tamara Rojo, who play the star-crossed lovers with aplomb despite being more than twice their age. Acosta is to ballet what Tom Cruise is to cinema – a [...]
A trite portrayal of war, and a horse that (gasp!) can’t act January 12, 2012 Film WAR HORSE Cert: 12A ** WAR Horse, Stephen Spielberg’s latest, shouldn’t be a film about horses, but it is. As a film, in which a boy’s beloved horse is sold to war and passes through the hands of a series of owners all caught up in war, it did nothing for me. Horses cannot [...]
Spacey and Irons shine in banking crash movie January 12, 2012 Film MARGIN CALL Cert: 15A **** IT’S 2008 and we’re in a Manhattan skyrise, in the offices of a bank that may or may not be based on Lehman Brothers. All hell is about to break loose when, following a round of sackings, a USB stick emerges from now-ex employee Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci). As [...]
Shard could signal crisis, claims BarCap January 11, 2012 THE DEVELOPERS of the Shard skyscraper could be forgiven for having pre-completion nerves yesterday, after a pair of gloomy research papers cast a pall over the tower. The Shard will be entering a rough rental market when it completes in May, according to research by BNP Paribas Real Estate. Last year, take-up of office space [...]
Cloud gaming is here – we ask if it was worth the wait January 11, 2012 Video games have come a long way since Mario helped to win over a generation of (almost exclusively) boys in the 1980s. Titles like Modern Warfare 3 are more profitable than most blockbuster Hollywood movies. The complexity and depth of games like LA Noire or the Bioshock franchise lend a cultural weight to an industry [...]
Why CES needs a kick in the behind January 11, 2012 How many big names can a band lose before they have to call it a day? Axl Rose just about managed to keep Guns ‘n’ Roses going, despite being the last original member, but only because his ego generates enough gravity to glue the fabric of the universe together. The Sugarbabes went one step further, [...]
CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW ROUND-UP January 11, 2012 DELL LINES UP FIRST TABLET Dell has announced it intends to launch its first tablet in late 2012, marking its entry into a hotly contested and increasingly crowded arena that has already claimed arch-foe Hewlett Packard. The once-dominant firm has seen a growing crop of tablets and smartphones entice consumers away from PCs. Dell says [...]
Getting shirty: the key styles to look out for this spring/summer January 11, 2012 Shirts this season are sticking largely to last year’s key trend: less is more. While suits are becoming more adventurous, shirts will remain relatively low-key. Crisp white with no texturing in the fabric and few frills in the design should be a wardrobe staple, allowing your suit and tie to do the talking. Slim-fit is [...]
OUT OF OFFICE January 11, 2012 HOCKNEY AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY, 21 JAN-9 APRIL A Bigger Picture showcases new landscape works by Hockney, spanning a 50 year period. It includes a display of his iPad drawings and a series of new films produced using 18 cameras, which will be displayed on multiple screens. www.royalacademy.org.uk OYSTER SHED TO OPEN IN CITY Whatever [...]
The i40: great for visiting the in-laws January 10, 2012 There are a number of criteria that make up the ideal family car. First of all, it needs to be big enough to carry gifts from the opposing sides of the family you’re obliged to visit, plus any bulky items you manage to raid from what’s left of the January sales. It’s also got to [...]