Year: 2013
The Place Beyond the Pines & Tabu
Saturday, May 11th, 2013 Film Reviews,Although I’m not much interested in the celebrity circuit, it was surprising to read, late last year, that Bradley Cooper had been named The Sexiest Man Alive by People magazine. By all accounts the most outraged constituency were fans of Ryan Gosling, the other Hollywood pin-up boy of our era. If it achieves nothing else, […]
Jeff Wall
Saturday, May 11th, 2013 Art Column,Even in this age of digital revolution most people will accept that a painting or a sculpture demands to be seen at first hand. Photographs, however, are a different matter. Not only are the works of every great photographer viewable on-line, they often look better in a large-format book than on the gallery wall. Not […]
Monet preview
Saturday, May 4th, 2013 Art Column,Paul Cézanne paid Claude Monet one of the most famous backhanded compliments in the history of art when he wrote: “Monet is just an eye, but good God, what an eye!” (“Monet n’est qu’un oeil, mais bon Dieu, quel oeil!”) In his later years that eye failed the great Impressionist at a time when he […]
Simi Garewal: Women in Indian cinema
Saturday, May 4th, 2013 Blog,When your website has been up for five months and has received more than 5 million hits, you may justifiably be called a celebrity. In her native land Simi Garewal is known as a movie actress, and as the host of Rendezvous, a provocative television program on which she has interviewed Indian film stars, politicians, […]
Audi Festival of German Film & The Hunt
Saturday, May 4th, 2013 Film Reviews,Having done the stats on the French film industry earlier this year, the annual Audi Festival of German Films tempts me to take a quick look at Europe’s other great cinematic powerhouse. While the French clocked up 272 features in 2011, the Germans managed a respectable 212. This makes it the seventh biggest film producer […]
White Rabbit: Smash Palace
Saturday, May 4th, 2013 Art Column,Every exhibition at White Rabbit, the Neilson family’s private museum of contemporary Chinese art, has featured at least one show-stopper. The tour-de-force in the current show, Smash Palace, is Cheng Dapeng’s Wonderful City (2011-12), a 9.6 metre-long 3D print. On a long, light-box table, Cheng has placed a scale model of a city overrun with […]
The Other Son & Haute Cuisine
Saturday, April 27th, 2013 Film Reviews,‘Switched at birth’ was a favourite plot device for Gilbert and Sullivan. It resolved a lot of tricky dilemmas and allowed true love to overcome barriers of class and kinship. By now the theme might seem as corny as a Victorian operetta, but a good device can always be relied upon for new twist. The […]
Zadok Ben-David & Adam Rish
Saturday, April 27th, 2013 Art Column,It may be presumptuous to declare Anglo-Israeli artist, Zadok Ben-David a great sculptor, but there is no denying he is one of the great entertainers in world art. If you were to ask me: “What’s wrong with that?” I’d have to reply: “Nothing at all.” There is an air of sanctimony about much contemporary art, […]
Salon de Refusés 2013 & Jenny Sages
Saturday, April 20th, 2013 Art Column,This year’s Archibald Prize was one of the most even contests in decades, but also one of the least memorable. There have been pictures in previous competitions that would have romped home in this year’s field, but the luck and timing was with Del Kathryn Barton, not with the ghosts of Archibalds past. If there […]
NO & The Company You Keep
Saturday, April 20th, 2013 Film Reviews,In old episodes of Get Smart, it was not uncommon for Secret Agent 86 to wish that some villain had used his powers “for niceness instead of evil”. No is the movie that applies this wishful thought to the advertising industry. It is 1988, in Chile. The military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet has been […]