Green Room film review: Patrick Stewart and Imogen Poots star in this short, sharp horror full of slicing, mauling and stab-stab-stabbing directed by Jeremy Saulnier May 12, 2016 You know that puzzle where you have to get a fox and a chicken and some grain across a river? Green Room is like that, only the river is a neo-Nazi club-house, the grain is a punk band who have witnessed a brutal murder, the chicken is some furious men with guns and the fox [...]
Focus On Shepherd’s Bush: Westfield expansion and old BBC Television Centre homes put W12 in limelight May 12, 2016 For years now, the east has been the land of regeneration. The long lead up to the Olympic Games in Stratford and the success of the City fringes have seen most of property agents’ “up-and-coming” rhetoric focused in that direction and one could be mistaken for thinking there was simply nowhere else for traditionally prosperous west [...]
The Angry Birds Movie is a story for children about a collection of rare birds violently catapulted into shoddily built towers May 12, 2016 In a post-Battleship world, it seems no premise or product is too remote to base a film on. Step in Angry Birds, the mobile game that was the saviour of long commutes everywhere when it burst on to the scene in 2009. The spin-off movie was met with incredulity but hopes have quietly risen given [...]
George Shaw brings his haunting My Back to Nature series of paintings to the National Gallery May 12, 2016 George Shaw is best known for his highly detailed renditions of high streets and urban scenes from middle England, favouring enamel paint more commonly used for Airfix models. These deliberately unspectacular, eerie images reached their widest audiences following his nomination for the Turner Prize in 2011. It is fascinating, then, to see how this traditional [...]
How do you create a sex-heavy unreality for an unshockable twenty-first century audience? May 12, 2016 Diarist Samuel Pepys saw A Midsummer Night’s Dream – for the first and last time – in 1662, describing it as the most “ridiculous play that ever I saw in my life” despite “some good dancing and some handsome women”. Centuries later, can the sex-fuelled plot still baffle a contemporary audience? Emma Rice takes a stab in her first production as [...]
Sophie Conran talks us through how she decorated her Bayswater home while a banoffee pie bakes in the oven May 12, 2016 As I am shown into Sophie Conran’s kitchen, the interior/product designer and cook is, naturally, putting the finishing touches to a banoffee pie. Smart in a blue jacket, jeans and a ponytail, she’s warm and natural with a big smile. Sophie's used to having media drop in on her – she holds product launches of her homewares [...]
New homes on sale in London this weekend: from Elephant Park to private gardens designed by Andy Sturgeon May 11, 2016 Elephant Park, Elephant & Castle From £540,000 Studio to three bedroom apartments and penthouses have been released in the Highwood Gardens building. The release of 222 properties for sale is the latest chapter in Lend Lease’s Elephant Park development, which will build almost 2,500 new homes on 22 acres of land and create a new [...]
Eight of London’s best rooftop bars and summer terraces in London to drink cocktails, eat BBQ and get sunburned, from Chelsea to The City to Canary Wharf May 11, 2016 The weekend's mini-heatwave may already seem like a distant memory, but fear not – we're due plenty more long, hot afternoons that are good for nothing but sitting on a terrace sipping pink cocktails and sweating. But where can one achieve such a glorious thing? Well, let us tell you – here's a round-up of some [...]
New Holland Park restaurant Six Portland Road serves black-pudding to die for May 10, 2016 Remember Neil Webb? He was a roving midfielder who played for Manchester United and England, but in my mind he’ll always be synonymous with the generation of footballers who retired just before the unfathomable riches of the Premier League rolled in. Unlike today’s players, these guys had to carve out new careers in their mid-30s, [...]
This egg is only in season for the next six weeks – get it while you can May 10, 2016 The first time I saw gulls’ eggs on a menu was during my my first job in London at the Ninety Park Lane restaurant in Grosvenor House. I was still a bit of a green lad from Dorset and I remember saying “I thought I’d escaped these flying terrorists when I left the seaside”. We [...]