Porsche 911 Turbo S review: At last, the people’s supercar has arrived and it’s just as practical as it is potent March 21, 2016 Porsche 911 Turbo S Price | £145,773 0-62mph | 2.9 secs Top speed | 205mph CO2 g/km | 212g/km Mpg combined | 31.0mpg The verdict Design | ★★★☆☆ Performance | ★★★★★ Practicality | ★★★★ Value for money | ★★☆☆☆ Remember when Porsches were known for being widowmakers? In the 80s, people feared they’d spin into a hedge backwards if they [...]
Miss Atomic Bomb is an explosive night out that will make the audience fallout of the theatre in a glow March 17, 2016 St James Theatre | ★★★☆☆ Miss Atomic Bomb has suffered from theatre critics’ love of mean-spirited puns, with some suggesting it failed to detonate and others, less inventively, just saying it bombed. These assessments are overly harsh; though nobody would call it a blast, there’s a critical mass of enjoyable material here, such that after it [...]
Jane Horrocks’ love letter to post punk and new wave is a brilliant vanity project March 17, 2016 Young Vic | ★★★★☆ Jane Horrocks’ If You Kiss Me, Kiss Me is the kind of midlife crisis I hope I have one day. The star of The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and Absolutely Fabulous has been recording music with producer Kipper, because why the hell not? And why not perform it at [...]
Tom Hiddleston shines in High Rise, a stylish adaptation of JG Ballard’s architectural dystopia March 17, 2016 Dir. Ben Wheatley | ★★★★☆ "Later, as he sat on his balcony eating the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” The opening sentence of JG Ballard’s High Rise is up there with the English literary canon’s very best. It’s all [...]
10 Cloverfield Lane review: a pared-back, genre-hopping success March 17, 2016 Cloverfield was a lurching, visceral monster movie that played on our post-911 fears of sudden, inexplicable horror occurring in our cities, its grainy hand-held footage recalling the language of 24-hour news channels. Eight years later its follow-up – “stable-mate” might be a better term – is every bit as skin-crawling, but for very different reasons. [...]
Bill Murray’s film Rock the Kasbah is ill-conceived, poorly-executed March 17, 2016 In Rock the Kasbah’s universe, all we need to do to end the troubles in the Middle East is send Bill Murray out there to tell them all what’s what. Murray essentially plays himself playing a struggling talent manager, whose paltry existence on the periphery of the industry is propped up by hustling X-Factor wannabes. [...]
Motown the Musical’s songs deliver, but the lack of story lets it down March 17, 2016 Shaftesbury Theatre | ★★☆☆☆ If you don’t like at least one song released on the Motown label between 1960 and 1975, you’re utterly joyless and there’s something wrong with you. Berry Gordy’s hugely successful label discovered a young Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson among literally hundreds of others. Many of their hits [...]
Top tips for choosing the right tenant for your buy-to-let investment March 17, 2016 So you’ve spent months searching for the perfect property investment and transforming it into a modern, comfortable home. Now it’s time to hand over the keys to a perfect stranger and hope they pay up. Or perhaps you’re upsizing and you’re hoping Mr Rando won’t destroy your beloved first home. But how can you be [...]
Will Steinway & Sons’ newest invention, the Spirio, bring the player piano back into homes? March 17, 2016 The digital revolution has upset a lot of industries, but perhaps none more so than the music industry. With file sharing and streaming via subscription services the norm, the sight of vast collections of CDs stacked up around a home entertainment system is already becoming a rarity in living rooms. As a heritage brand with [...]
Focus On Canning Town: For affordability and an easy commute to Canary Wharf, the only way is E16 March 17, 2016 East London’s post-industrial landscape is rapidly disappearing in favour of quirky cultural venues, artfully rustic cafes and glassy residential towers. While the investment potential in Hackney and Tower Hamlets has been well-documented, other locations that are just as accessible have managed to slip under the radar. One of these is Canning Town, a part of [...]