Ghost Recon: Wildlands review: Hunt down druglords in this ambitious but flawed open-world shooter March 15, 2017 In Ghost Recon Wildlands, the latest open world game from Ubisoft, you head to Bolivia, here a narco state overrun with junkies and drug lords who’ve corrupted those in power and killed anyone that stood in their way. You traverse and shoot your way across mountains, deserts, woodlands and floodplains as a four-strong team of [...]
British book worms are spending more on reading this year, sending sales up £100m March 13, 2017 Britons are reading more than last year and increased spending by six per cent on books by as much as £100m more compared to 2016, according to research from Nielsen Book Research UK. Printed book sales were up seven per cent, driven by greater reading amongst younger generations, despite commonly held assumptions that young people [...]
Elle film review: a bizarre but effective revenge comedy as black as the sky on a moonless night March 10, 2017 The recent gaff at the Oscars meant a number of films and performances were lost amid the noise. One of them was Elle, which gained a Best Actress nomination for French star Isabelle Huppert. A favourite of film makers including Michael Haneke, she takes the title role in Paul Verhoeven’s (RoboCop, Starship Troopers, Total Recall) [...]
Films out this week: Dancer, Catfight, and I.T. reviewed March 10, 2017 Our reviews of the films out this week: Dancer (12A) Dir. Steven Cantor ★★☆☆☆ By Melissa York Does being talented and doing the thing you love make you happy? Well, it didn’t cheer Sergei Polunin up. The former prodigy and youngest ever principal dancer at the Royal Ballet hit the headlines when he huffed out of [...]
Limehouse at Donmar review: SDP drama is an invigorating take-down of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour March 10, 2017 "The Labour Party is fucked” is the axiomatic opening line of Steve Waters’ rousing new play. The year is 1981 and the location is the Limehouse kitchen in which the so-called “gang of four” Labour big beasts plotted the formation of the breakaway SDP. The parallels with Jeremy Corbyn’s party are dishearteningly clear. As now, [...]
The American Dream: Pop to the Present charts a wavering course through pop art history March 9, 2017 This giant, twelve-room exhibition of half a century’s worth of American pop art gets the genre’s money shot out of the way pretty sharpish. A familiar multicolour Marilyn stares you down on the way in, a psychedelic Warholian hydra looming over the entrance hall. She introduces an exhibition that attempts to trace some artistic line [...]
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead review: Daniel Radcliffe shines in this absurdist and tragicomic Shakespearean send-up March 9, 2017 Those who hate Shakespeare’s most famous play will rejoice in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, two and a half hours dedicated to tearing up his two most pointless characters and their part in arguably his biggest plot hole. Equally, those who love a bit of Bard will be intrigued to see the story entirely from [...]
Hit Makers by Derek Thompson: Read this book if you want to learn how to write March 9, 2017 I have a confession to make: I don’t like reading books about consumer culture. I often find the subject slight, the writing bland and the overall effort insubstantial. But I read Hit Makers by Derek Thompson. Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, is a distinct voice in liberal American journalism, and Hit Makers, his [...]
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review – Nintendo’s latest is the greatest game they’ve made since 1990-something March 8, 2017 A very long time ago indeed, in the ancient year of 1986, there existed a NES game called The Legend of Zelda. It was like nothing else at the time, a sprawling and freeform fantasy adventure that thrust you into an open world with little guidance, and left you to figure out how everything worked. [...]
A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The Young Vic review: A dispiriting slog through the mud March 3, 2017 A perennial favourite, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is traditionally presented as a magical, romantic comedy. However, Joe Hill-Gibbins’ conspicuously dismal production at the Young Vic cares little for such frivolities. The treatment of the text is fairly conservative, but there’s a subtle change in tone that refocuses the audiences’ attention on the play’s murky [...]