Sleeping With Other People review: a mediocre rom-com with commitment problems December 18, 2015 15 | Dir. Leslye Headland ★★☆☆☆ Late bloomers Lainey (Community’s Alison Brie) and Jake (We’re The Millers’ Jason Sudeikis) play two shy students who lose their virginity to each other during a one night stand at Columbia University. Fast forward 12 years and they cross paths again, only this time, they’re both non-committal, serial cheaters. [...]
Tech predictions for 2016, including apps for everything, a space trip for everyone and drones blotting out the sun December 17, 2015 What an incredible year it’s been for science and technology. No frontier has been left unexplored. No bar unraised. No envelope unpushed. Not only did we invent a new type of motorised skateboard that spontaneously bursts into flames, but Apple made a really big iPad and now our watches shout at us for being unhealthy. [...]
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 review: an almost perfect tablet-laptop hybrid December 17, 2015 ★★★★★ A laptop-tablet hybrid, the Surface Pro 4 compresses the full and unfettered desktop version of the Windows 10 operating system into a sleek and A4-sized touchscreen. That means it runs proper, grown up Windows applications. You know, your executables and the like, the sort of things you double click on and do actual work with. [...]
Rainbow Six Siege review: an online shooter game with brains December 17, 2015 Rainbow Six has been around for as long as anybody can remember (that is to say, since 1998). Once a highly tactical anti-terrorist shooter renowned for its intricate planning stages and one-bullet-kills realism, subsequent releases saw the series gradually descend into a homogenised guff of squad-based, noisy gung-ho action blandness. Rainbow Six Siege bravely shifts [...]
Skiing in Val d’Isere: How to look good on the slopes next to former Olympian Alain Baxter December 14, 2015 Everyone wants to look good when they’re skiing. From Armani-clad oligarchs lounging on the mountain restaurant terraces to the teenagers with GoPro cameras and a selfie stick, the goal is to look like you know what you’re doing. One way to achieve this appearance is to don a lycra ski-racing suit and a numbered racing [...]
The Long Weekend review: Thyme, Gloucestershire December 14, 2015 THE WEEKEND: Nestled deep in the Cotswolds countryside, former surgeon Caryn Hibbert has spent the last 12 years gradually buying up the 14th Southrop Manor and surrounding farm buildings to create an idyllic home away from home – first for her family and then for us, the lucky public. The result is Thyme hotel with [...]
Sisters review: Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s new comedy is our film of the week December 11, 2015 Sisters 15 | Dir. Jason Moore ★★★★☆ Only the comedy powerhouse that is Tina Fey and Amy Poehler could walk into a studio and get funding for a gross-out movie for divorced women in their 40s. The result is Sisters, in which Fey plays Kate, a partying single mum who can’t keep down a job, and Poehler is [...]
Hector and Grandma: This week’s new film releases reviewed December 11, 2015 Hector 15 | Dir. Jake Gavin ★★★★☆ Peter Mullan plays the title role in this British drama about a homeless man who travels from Glasgow to London to spend a few days at a Christmas shelter. With a big operation on the horizon, he uses the journey to revisit the events and broken relationships that drove [...]
Top theatre picks this week: A Christmas Carol, Macbeth and You For Me For You December 11, 2015 A Christmas Carol, Noel Coward Theatre ★★★★☆ If pantomime’s a bit too shouty and daft for your tastes but you’re still in the market for something festive, this flamboyant production of A Christmas Carol ticks all the right boxes. Jim Broadbent plays miser Ebenezer Scrooge with a twinkle in his eye and a skip in [...]
Property of the Fortnight: Inside former England defender Sol Campbell’s £6.5m Chelsea penthouse December 11, 2015 No one knows how to flash their cash like Premier League footballers. From Mario Balotelli’s camouflage Bentley to Steven Ireland’s £100,000 aquarium (complete with a coral reef imported from Fiji), they’re pretty big spenders, if not exactly renowned for their good taste. But when estate agents Strutt & Parker revealed former England defender Sol Campbell’s home [...]
