My House: Preston Fitzgerald, an art and antiques collector who’s turned his home into a pop-up exhibition space for young artists November 23, 2016 I’ve been living in London with my partner for 21 years now, having moved here from New York City. I had come from a sales background, but left that behind when I went back to school to get my postgraduate degree in art history. When I began working at Sotheby’s in furniture and contemporary design, [...]
Fancy some stargazing? Hop on a plane to La Palma, the most stellar of the Canary Islands November 17, 2016 The farthest of the Canary Islands from the coast of Africa has just 80,000 inhabitants, and 150,000 visitors per year. Unlike its rocky neighbours, there is enormous variety on the island, with mountains above the clouds, black sand beaches and a night sky that has made it a must see for astrology lovers the world [...]
Arrival review: This is Close Encounters for the Interstellar generation November 10, 2016 Language is both a bridge and a barrier in Arrival, a film in which a dozen gargantuan alien ships appear around the world and cause global existential upset. These obsidian-black sentinels hover metres above the earth, silent, still and towering, and in an effort to figure out the intentions and nature of their occupants the [...]
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare limps into outer space, but its generic sci-fi stylings are anything but stellar November 9, 2016 This year’s Call of Duty takes place in a war-torn vision of the future that, given the current political climate, seems entirely too achievable. Mankind has successfully mastered space travel, colonising the planets of our solar system using our fleet of cool spaceships. But despite our advanced technology, infinite resources and superfast iPads, we’re still [...]
Amadeus review: Mozart is an insufferable little turdperson in this pathos-laden account of inter-composer rivalry November 4, 2016 When the brilliant and tortured Italian composer Antonio Salieri enviously considers Mozart’s final requiem – his masterpiece – the forsaken musician howls to God, “what need to mourn a man who will live forever?” In this excellent revival of Peter Schaffer’s pathos-sodden 1979 play, Salieri is the studious and distinguished muso whose work has been [...]
Here are three very tiny gadgets small enough to potentially one day accidentally swallow November 4, 2016 Skeye Nano 2 FPV Drone £109, trndlabs.com Selfie-sticks are terrible inventions, requiring you to balance your precious phone on the end of a rickety old bit of rod while you and your friends desperately huddle together like animals. It’s an inelegant solution, which is why TRNDlabs created the world’s first selfie drone, a tiny orange [...]
These are the seven best fish and chips in London, and I’ll hear no more on the matter November 1, 2016 1. Golden Union 38 Poland St, London W1F 7LY Fish are basically the potatoes of the ocean. And potatoes are just a kind of fish that lives in the dirt. When these two edible stewards of the underworld come together we call it fish and chips, and nowhere is the pairing better exemplified than at [...]
A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer review: Cancer cells dance around inflatable tumours in this musical about disease October 27, 2016 A musical in which colourful cancer cells fart about on stage like rejected Saturday morning cartoon characters, A Pacifist’s Guide to the War on Cancer is an unexpectedly jazzy and frenetic show. It dissects and digests the bleak world of terminal illness with a song and a dance, as tumours slowly emerge from the stage [...]
Amazon Echo review: Or how I started talking to a little black cylinder every day October 25, 2016 How often do you trust Siri to do much besides setting a timer when you’re cooking pasta, or telling you whether or not it’s going to rain? Since they crept into our pockets, virtual assistants haven’t progressed much past the point of pseudo-capable helpers, who are unreliable in most roles beyond fancy egg-timers and meteorologists [...]
Amazon’s £49 virtual assistant launches in the UK today: The Amazon Echo Dot October 20, 2016 Amazon has announced that the all-new Echo Dot launches in the UK today. Whereas the larger Echo device has its own speaker, the puck-sized Dot must be connected to external speakers to allow you to control your home entertainment system using your voice. It also works alone if you'd just like to chat to Alexa, the Echo's artificial intelligence, using a [...]
