New Hockney work is pretty but lacking January 26, 2012 Art DAVID HOCKNEY Royal Academy *** by Zoe Strimpel David Hockney’s extensive new show at the Royal Academy had, predictably enough, attracted long snaking queues on Day one. Hour one, in fact. But is it worth the hype? The topic is East Yorkshire, Hockney’s home turf and the one to which he returned in the [...]
GOING OUT January 26, 2012 The festive season witnessed the birth of a plethora of new bars and clubs in the capital, notable amongst them was The Rose on 23 Orchard Street in Marylebone, brought to you by clubland mainstays Nick House and Piers Adam (Whisky Mist, Punchbowl, Mahiki). Their newest project houses a 300 capacity, chic speakeasy-style nightclub with [...]
Pasqua’s visceral images scream for your attention – some of them deserve it January 26, 2012 Art PHILIPPE PASQUA Opera Gallery, 134 New Bond Street *** by Steve Dinneen The first image you are faced with at the new Philippe Pasqua exhibition is a female nude. The wheelchair-bound figure’s arms are twisted back in a way that reminded me of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks. It is a violent, striking painting, [...]
Clooney shines in this very human tale January 26, 2012 Film THE DESCENDANTS Cert: 15 **** by Steve Dinneen Alexander Payne does a rare thing in mainstream cinema; he makes films that are just about people – their flaws and insecurities and hopes and failures. It’s a tricky thing to get right. When not much happens in your movie, you’d better hope the script – [...]
Grey is absurd but it’s no howler January 26, 2012 Film THE GREY Cert: 15 *** by Stevie Martin Liam Neeson stars in this surprisingly fun and occasionally grisly survivalist story, complete with treacherous storms, sudden death and jumping off cliffs across mile-high crevasses. When Ottway’s (Neeson) flight home from Alaska goes down, stranding eight men in the middle of nowhere, he knows it’s not [...]
How we’ll waste our time this year January 25, 2012 SONY PLAYSTATION VITA Expected: 24 February Price: £280 with 3G Sony’s long-awaited portable console is almost upon us. We now know it features both a touch-screen (expected) and an innovative touch-sensitive rear (similar to the one that failed to materialise on the iPhone 4), meaning you can control the system with swipes of your finger [...]
Please wake me up when Apple does something wrong January 25, 2012 Bouncing a ball against a wall is fun. Doing it a hundred times is still fun. But bouncing the same ball against the same wall for years on end can get a little repetitive. Finding creative ways to dress up the words “Apple,” “record” and “profits” is like bouncing that ball. For a long time [...]
Boxing clever: the new Land Rover January 24, 2012 Right now Land Rover’s design team is halfway through a programme to redesign the world’s most famous 4×4, the Land Rover Defender. The goal is to take the key elements of the iconic car and create a cool, new and modern version of a design that has remained mostly unchanged since 1948. For the time [...]
CAR TALK January 24, 2012 NEW SLK 55 AMG TO SET YOU BACK UNDER £55,000 Mercedes–Benz has announced prices for its powerful SLK 55 AMG. The top of the line AMG model has a new 5.5-litre V8 engine good for 421bhp which can propel the car from 0-62mph in 4.6 seconds. The car produces 30 per cent less emissions and [...]
There is more to Rioja than wine (although that would be plenty) January 24, 2012 PRINCE Charles surely wouldn’t approve. In the dell of Villabuena de Alava, a sleepy, sloping village squatting among the vineyards of Spain’s Rioja Alavesa region, sits the jagged, unruly modernism of Hotel Viura. It is one of those “impossible” buildings, an optical illusion that seems to squeeze in more angles, surfaces and textures than logic [...]