Iconoclasts at the Saatchi Gallery review: This repeatedly fascinating collection of pieces is in search of a unifying theme September 28, 2017 Iconoclasm is an apt subject for an exhibition in 2017, when nary a venerated institution remains unscathed. But if you’re hoping for a coherent argument about its place in the modern artistic canon, you will leave the Saatchi Gallery disappointed. If, however, you’re happy to simply enjoy the works of 13 vastly different artists without [...]
Basquiat: Boom for Real at the Barbican charts the astonishing ascendancy of New York’s hippest 80s scenester September 21, 2017 His works fetch more at auction than those of any other American painter – one sold this year for £85m – but Jean-Michel Basquiat remains an outsider in the world of contemporary art, written off by many as little more than a precocious street artist with connections. And, in this country at least, you could [...]
Rachel Whiteread at Tate Britain review: A wonderful collection of objects that find beauty in the everyday September 14, 2017 If we could all find someone to look at us the way Rachel Whiteread looks at an empty loo roll, the world would be a happier place. Few artists find quiet beauty in everyday things like she does. While her contemporaries like Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin were creating sculptures filled with live flies or [...]
Mother! film review: Darren Aronofsky’s brutal new film is as dark as it is hilarious September 14, 2017 Nobody who’s seen Requiem for a Dream or Black Swan expects an easy ride from Darren Aronofsky, but his latest film still manages to blindside you, setting up what first appears to be a gentle farce before sucker-punching you with some of the most gleefully heinous imagery you’re likely to see this year. It follows [...]
Follies review: Five stars for this masterful production of Stephen Sondheim’s love letter to the Broadway revue September 7, 2017 “I’m just a Broadway Baby/Walking off my tired feet/Pounding 42nd street/To be in a show…” sings Hattie in Follies, Stephen Sondheim’s love letter to the Broadway revue. Yet this show isn’t about starstruck youths dreaming of their name in lights, but the far more fascinating lives of ageing stars and what happens to them when [...]
Lost for words: The indie bookshop has weathered many storms, from the rise of Amazon to rising rents. But its future has never looked so perilous September 7, 2017 Prospero’s Books stood on Crouch End Broadway for 10 years. I remember it, though not well. The bookshops of my childhood memories are all vaguely similar – they were places where I’d be both happy and bored. To hear locals tell it, there wasn’t any sign that Prospero’s was in trouble. It seemed to plod [...]
It 2017 film review: New version of the Stephen King classic starring Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the killer clown buckles under the weight of expectation September 7, 2017 Tim Curry made such a lasting impression as Pennywise in the 1990 version of Stephen King’s It that it’s easy to forget what a terrible, steaming heap of garbage the rest of it was. The made-for-TV miniseries was a clown-car of a show, with pieces falling off left, right and centre – awful pacing, bad [...]
Brighton’s brilliant beancounter: 20 years on, how a lifelong fan saved the Seagulls from extinction August 30, 2017 At 9pm on Christmas Eve 1996, Paul Samrah, a well-to-do partner at mid-tier accountancy firm Kingston Smith, sorted through the last of his mail in preparation for the festive break. “It was the last envelope I opened,” Samrah recalls to City A.M.. To his horror, he had been slapped with a two-year ban from Brighton [...]
How much is winning the Champions League worth? Prize money at stake for Liverpool and Celtic announced by Uefa August 18, 2017 Clubs can earn up to €57.2m (£48m) in prize money for winning the Champions League this season, after European governing body Uefa announced they would hand out €1.3bn to clubs in the competition. Uefa has recommitted to putting up the same sums of prize money as it did last season, when the competition’s most successful [...]
Atomic Blonde film review: Charlize Theron dazzles in this exercise in style over substance by director of John Wick August 11, 2017 Every few years a movie comes along that rewrites the rule-book for the Hollywood blockbuster, sending out tonal and stylistic ripples for decades to come. There was Die Hard with its dry, flawed protagonist John McClane, the Bourne series’ perpetual-motion shaky-cam, the Matrix’s use of bullet time. And in 2014 there was John Wick. Combining [...]