Year: 2013
Mr. Pip
Saturday, November 16th, 2013 Film Reviews,Directing the Shrek movies and Chronicles of Narnia may seem a strange preparation for a movie about the bloody conflict in Bougainville in the early 1990s. It would be good to report that Andrew Adamson removes all doubts in his film adaptation of Lloyd Jones’s acclaimed novel, Mr. Pip, revealing himself as a truly versatile […]
Fruitvale Station
Saturday, November 9th, 2013 Film Reviews,“Based on a true story” is a claim that confers a special moral distinction on a movie. We are not talking about the fantasy adventures of James Bond or Superman, or some frivolous rom com. The film we have chosen to watch is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If only. […]
The Counselor
Saturday, November 9th, 2013 Film Reviews,In a hotel room in El Paso, two anonymous bodies are entwined beneath the sheets. We listen to their conversation for minutes before we lay eyes on Michael Fassbender and Penélope Cruz, playing the Counselor and his girlfriend, Laura. Having just seen a big René Magritte exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, […]
Sculpture by the Sea 2013
Saturday, November 9th, 2013 Art Column,It was not the best of times, it was not worst of times. The 17th annual Sculpture by the Sea (SxS) features the usual mix of pieces that might be described as ‘serious’ sculpture, and others that are little more than gimmicks. It has become a familiar recipe but seems to go down well with […]
Bigger is Better
Friday, November 8th, 2013 Blog,David Hockney broke all previous attendance records at the Royal Academy of Arts last year, with his show A Bigger Picture. The RA tells us that 650,000 people crowded through those galleries to see a show largely devoted to landscapes of Yorkshire, the artist’s birthplace. It sounds hard to believe, until one sees David Hockney: A Bigger […]
Roy Jackson, John Peart, Syd Ball
Saturday, November 2nd, 2013 Art Column,One morning in July I was in Wedderburn, filming an interview with the artist, John Peart. The theme of the conversation was a recent trip to the Kimberley, and the new body of work it had inspired. Inevitably we also spoke about John’s longtime friend and neighbour, Roy Jackson, who had died of lung cancer […]
Renoir
Saturday, November 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,Renoir, a bio-pic about the great Impressionist, poses a familiar paradox: directors love making films about artists, but most artists lead completely sedentary lives. For every Caravaggio, whose life was a tangle of sex and violence, there are thousands of plodders who barely left the studio except to go painting in a field. This doesn’t […]
The Butler
Saturday, November 2nd, 2013 Film Reviews,When a film touches on shameful events that are still raw and painful it exerts a strange moral blackmail on the viewer. In terms of script and character development, The Butler is a horribly corny movie. As a nose-to-the-glass chronicle of the civil rights movement, Lee Daniels’s melodrama strikes at the heart of America’s good […]
Blancanieves & Patrick
Saturday, October 26th, 2013 Film Reviews,Blancanieves There must be a reason why certain myths or fairy tales suddenly resurface in popular culture. Blancanieves was one of three movies made last year based on the story of Snow White. It is the best by a considerable margin – the other two contenders being Mirror, Mirror, and Snow White and the Huntsman […]
Newcastle: After Five, or Five Minutes to Midnight?
Saturday, October 26th, 2013 Art Column,It’s distressing that every time I’ve written about Newcastle this year the exhibition has had to share column space with some new crisis. The only progress is that these crises keep getting worse, with the latest developments being almost unbelievable. At a meeting on 24 September, the Council voted to adopt a controversial restructure proposed […]