Dolly Parton’s Christmas Carol, Southbank Centre review: Catchy new tunes in touching show December 15, 2022 As a title, Dolly Parton’s Smoky Mountain Christmas Carol doesn’t give away much. It inevitably conjures images of Parton herself: her widely permed hair and even wider smile, an image as familiar and iconic as the Coca-Cola sign. Eavesdropping on conversationsn in the foyer of the Southbank Centre, it was clear that audiences hadn’t got [...]
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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 [...]
Why You Should Become Your Own Hype Person At Work December 12, 2022 Do you constantly second-guess yourself when making professional decisions or feel like your professional peers are surging ahead with their careers and you’re being left behind? It could be time to become your own hype person. But what is a hype person, exactly? Derived from the hip hop hype man, who is traditionally tasked with [...]
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 [...]