How The Maldives are properly celebrating their food culture December 12, 2022 On The Maldives, local cuisine is finally being properly celebrated. Angelina Villa-Clarke jets in to eat local delicacies including mud crabs I’m sat high in the treetops, hidden amongst the oversized leaves of banana trees. Flickering candles light the tables but, mostly, the scene is illuminated by the night sky, ablaze with an eternity of [...]
Leonardslee House is the UK hotel producing South African wine December 12, 2022 THE WEEKEND: Wanting to rusticate in luxurious splendour, we paid a visit to the newly launched accommodation at Leonardslee House. Owner Penny Streeter OBE has brought back a hefty slice of South Africa to rural England and filled the Grade I listed grounds with things to do and art to gawp at for all ages [...]
Hex, National Theatre, review: Tonally weird and too macabre December 9, 2022 The National Theatre’s Christmas show isn’t exactly a Christmas show. Hex is a modern interpretation of Sleeping Beauty, a boldly imaginative spectacle that is more than a touch macabre. In terms of the plot, a fairy lives deep in a forest and one day a palace worker running from a baby-eating ogre stumbles upon her [...]
White Noise sees Adam Driver reunite with Noah Baumbach in a strange narrative experiment December 9, 2022 A mouth-watering cast come together for Noah Baumbach’s first film since Oscar winning Marriage Story. He reunites with one of the stars from that movie, Adam Driver, in an adaptation of White Noise, the 1985 novel by Don Delillo. Set in garish 80s vision of America, Driver plays Jack Gladney. Jack is a professor of [...]
Pinocchio has never been darker than in the hands of Guillermo Del Toro December 9, 2022 Oscar winning Mexican filmmaker finally gets to offer his vision of the story of Pinocchio, a film with no connection to the Disney cartoon or the live action remake that came out this year. There have been countless adaptations over the years, but any time the Shape of Water filmmaker brings his unique eye to [...]
Will Smith follows up his slap with a swing and a miss December 8, 2022 Let’s get this out of the way, shall we? Emancipation is the first film Will Smith has starred in since he slapped Chris Rock on stage at the Academy Awards in March. What should have been a much- anticipated follow up to his Oscar-winning turn in King Richard now stands as a test to see [...]
How art can help corporations: An interview with Artiq CEO Patrick McCrae December 8, 2022 Making the business case for ‘soft skills’ and ‘soft acquisitions’ is increasingly familiar in the corporate sector, especially as people turned so much to the arts throughout the pandemic. I caught up with Patrick McCrae, CEO of Artiq, who has been selling the tangible benefits of art in the workplace for over a decade. What [...]
The Christmas gift guide 2022, by City A.M. December 8, 2022 Ho, ho, hold up on shopping for Christmas presents on the freezing cold streets of London… we present you with the City A.M. Christmas Gift Guide. Do your shopping online and find some seriously thoughtful presents in our guide, which is broken down into ten categories so there’s something for every type of gift receiver [...]
‘The prawns tasted of my parents getting divorced’ – Why we won’t be missing Trader Vic’s December 8, 2022 Trader Vic’s, the Polynesian restaurant that’s occupied the basement of the Park Lane Hotel since 1963, is being evicted at the end of the year. Our restaurant critic Steve Dinneen, who ate there in 2013, certainly won’t be pouring out a pina colada into a coconut to bid it farewell. Here’s what he had to [...]
The best (and worst) supermarket Christmas sandwiches 2022 December 8, 2022 It’s beginning to look a lot like, City A.M.’s annual Christmas sandwiches taste test! Don’t we treat you well… The City A.M. team have been torn away from writing about all the important stuff to chow down on some delicious Christmas sandwiches, as well as some truly awful ones bringing Scrooge energy that really should [...]