Beautiful Boy film review: Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet star in harrowing but flawed drug addiction memoir January 17, 2019 The drug movie is a tough genre to navigate. Go too far in one direction and it becomes preachy; too far in the other and you end up glamourising the fetid reality of addiction. Beautiful Boy is drawn from a pair of memoirs by the journalist David Sheff and his son Nicolas, and relates the [...]
The Raft review: A bizarre experiment to determine whether humans are naturally violent has predictably sexy consequences January 17, 2019 In 1973, Spanish-Mexican anthropologist and human behavioural psychologist Santiago Genoves stuck 11 strangers on a raft and sent them on a three-month voyage across the Atlantic. The ethically dubious experiment, which today sounds like the premise of a terrible reality TV show, is the subject of this gripping documentary, and was intended to determine whether [...]
Our resident chef columnist Mark Hix on why he’s been promoting bycatch crab in his restaurants January 15, 2019 I first encountered this dish years ago on the back of a boat in Sydney. It made use of their native mud crab, and it was a real treat. It’s the kind of dish you can cook at home with our native brown crabs, either chopped up whole or just using the claws, which make [...]
The Weekly Grill: Rotunda head chef Jai Parkinson on the delights of Barcelona and why you can’t beat his granny’s cooking January 15, 2019 Who are you and What do you do? I’m Jai Parkinson, head chef at Rotunda Bar & Restaurant, managing a small team of seven chefs. My main focus is developing new dishes based around our gate-to-plate ethos, featuring beef and Texel lamb produced at Corneyside Farm – our own farm in Northumberland. I introduced cooking [...]
Seven of the best mocktails: Keep your January dry with this selection of the best non-alcoholic cocktails in London January 15, 2019 1. Summer Cooler Margot, Covent Garden, £9.50 Pretend it’s the middle of July with this fresh orange juice and ginger ale punch, picked up with a splash of lime and garnished with a selection of berries. 2. Afternoon Reviver American Bar, Strand, £12 A fruity and coffee-based pick me up, this does exactly what it [...]
The Drinks Master: How Brexit could affect the wine industry (spoiler – it’s not good news) January 15, 2019 Howard Marks once said “there are no facts about the future, just opinions”. Has this ever been more true of a topic than of Brexit? Even after last night’s vote, it’s entirely unclear what’s going to happen. Many of us take solace in a glass of wine – but even that simple pleasure is under [...]
The Lancia Aurelia Outlaw is a controversial classic modified with hot rod-style roof chop. Tim Pitt drives it January 14, 2019 In the introspective, often impenetrable world of blue-chip classic cars, matching numbers are what matter. Collectors prize originality above all else, be it perfectly preserved patina or a better-than-new restoration. Subjecting a 1950s Italian GT to a hot rod-style roof chop is thus akin to spray-painting a smirk on Botticelli’s Venus. And displaying said car [...]
Spyro Reignited Trilogy review: The purple dragon with attitude is back January 14, 2019 Back in the late 1990s Spyro, the purple dragon with a bad boy attitude, aspired to be the next Mario or Sonic. Though he never reached the same heights of mascot fame, he was beloved by fans and has at least done enough to earn this remastered edition for nostalgia junkies. With the Spyro Reignited [...]
Fallout 76 review : Bethesda fails to cram multiplayer into the long-running RPG series January 14, 2019 Fallout 76, the latest in the long-running series of RPGs, is the answer to a question no-one was asking: what if it was multiplayer? In the new release, you play as a member of a nuclear bomb shelter sent out to reclaim post-apocalyptic America. You explore Appalachia (a reimagined West Virginia) and scavenge the wasteland [...]
More than a year after the British Virgin Islands were devastated by Hurricane Irma, this paradise is finally leaving recovery mode. Simon Miller sails its beautiful coastlines January 11, 2019 On 6 September 2017, hurricane winds of up to 215mph battered the British Virgin Islands. The strongest winds ever to have made landfall all but destroyed the islands, and resilient locals were faced with rebuilding their lives and communities. During the hurricane, Sunsail’s BVI base at Tortola was totally destroyed. Dozens of boats were ripped [...]