Parasite movie review: Bong Joon Ho’s surreal social commentary is a work of rare genius February 7, 2020 Over the last 90 years, the Academy has deigned to nominate just 10 foreign language films for the Best Picture gong, with none of them walking away with the gold statue. There’s an 11th in the running this year: Bong Joon Ho’s superlative Parasite. The director, whose oeuvre spans both Korean- (The Host, Mother) and [...]
Upgrade your movie night with these apartments that have home cinemas February 7, 2020 This Sunday (or more accurately for viewers in the UK, the early hours of Monday) is one of the biggest days in the calendar for cinephiles, as they get to find out the winners of the 92nd Academy Awards. Plenty will be staying up, if only to mock the dodgy acceptance speeches and secretly hope [...]
Drinks, scraps and weaves: Meet the couple turning plastic bottles into sustainable homeware February 7, 2020 It looks like wool, it weaves like wool, it’s soft like wool and you can wash it like wool. So how can these cosy rugs, cushions and throws be made entirely of recycled plastic bottles? The husband-and-wife founders of textiles company Weaver Green know the answer because they invented the thread – re-processing tons of [...]
Fitness advice: A beginner’s guide to weight training February 5, 2020 Weight training in the gym can be overwhelming at times, especially if you’re new to exercise. There are so many different machines and loads of people all doing strange, inscrutable things: grunting, posing, texting, swinging heavy stuff above their heads in ways that look painful and dangerous. Unlike running or cycling, which are pretty straightforward, [...]
Fashion Week highlights: The global outlook of the fashion and textile industry February 4, 2020 | City Talk Counting the cost of international payments in uncertain times The arrival of London Fashion Week sees buyers looking to define the trends for the coming season but the nature of the buying cycle means that these are particularly challenging times for importers and exporters of textiles and fashion. Uncertainty in global trade created by Brexit [...]
The Honda e concept dream is now an electric reality February 3, 2020 The Honda e electric car is a dream come true for enthusiasts. “Just build it!” they said, after seeing the original 2017 concept car at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Three years later, here it is, a ray of sunshine despite the best efforts of Storm Gloria in Valencia. “We’ve not seen anything like it in [...]
Uncle Vanya at the Harold Pinter Theatre review: Toby Jones delivers an acting masterclass January 31, 2020 Just as Dickens charted the plight of the underclass in Victorian England, Chekhov chronicled the slow collapse of the Russian aristocracy at the end of the 19th century. In Ian Rickson’s production of Uncle Vanya, adapted by award-winning playwright Conor McPherson, this breakdown is made literal, with trees winding through broken windows and vertiginous bookcases [...]
The Lighthouse film review: Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe shine in this tale of madness at sea January 31, 2020 From kids’ TV show Round the Twist to video game Bioshock, popular culture has painted lighthouses as, at best, weird and spooky, and at worst responsible for the complete collapse of society. Well guess what: it’s yet another bad day for the lighthouse marketing department. Robert Eggers follows up his brilliant 2016 period horror The [...]
Mushrooms: The Art, Design and Future of Fungi at Somerset House – A celebration of humanity’s great, unsung alliance January 31, 2020 There’s something about mushrooms that’s at once fascinating and horrifying. I remember opening a cupboard in an old flat and discovering a little field of pure-white mushrooms sprouting out of the carpet. Part of me was amazed that these strange things had taken up residence in my home, and part of me wanted to burn [...]
Faustus: That Damned Woman at the Lyric review – A flimsy gender-swapped adaptation January 31, 2020 The drive in British theatre to stage more plays by and about women has led to a spate of gender-swapped classics, reexamining and recontextualising their patriarchal power dynamics. Christopher Marlowe’s snappily titled The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus is the latest, and, on paper, it’s an ideal candidate. As Chris [...]