Hollywoodgate: Documentary behind the scenes of Taliban rule August 14, 2024 A year in Kabul offers up some startling footage in this documentary that goes behind the scenes of Taliban rule. Director Ibrahim Nash’at spends twelve months documenting the transition from US occupation in Afghanistan to Taliban control, focusing on alleged American military base Hollywood Gate. Taliban Air Force Commander Mawlawi Mansour discovers over $7billion of [...]
Swan Song is an affectionate documentary on the world of ballet August 14, 2024 Produced by Scream star and former dancer Neve Campbell, this affectionate documentary delves into the demanding and pressured world of ballet. Cameras follow the lead up to The National Ballet’s 2022 production of Swan Lake, intended to be the final work of artistic director Karen Kain, a hallowed figure in the ballet world. Having been [...]
Borderlands film review: Starry cast can’t save video game flop August 14, 2024 Horror maestro Eli Roth (Hostel) delves into the world of video game adaptations in this big screen version of Borderlands, the first-person shooter that has spawned many sequels and imitators. With the success of Uncharted, Super Mario Bros, and Five Nights At Freddy’s, the stigma attached to movies based on games isn’t as prominent as [...]
Carmen is a poisoned chalice and Carlos Acosta drinks deeply August 12, 2024 Carmen is a heroine who embodies the mid-nineteenth century bourgeois male idea that, left to their primitive, natural state, untouched by either Church or society’s civilising conventions, women are sexually irrepressible, promiscuous, fickle and dishonourable. The only profession they’d be qualified for, her creator (the French novelist Prosper Mérimée) reckons, is rolling cigars in a [...]
The Grapes of Wrath at the NT: Road novel stalls on stage August 8, 2024 There are a frankly depressing number of parallels between John Steinbeck’s 1939 masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath and the current state of the world, from humanitarian disasters caused by ecological collapse to the plight of vulnerable migrants and the failure of the penal system. It follows the Joads, a family stripped of their income after [...]
Miraval mystery: The Jersey trust at heart of Brad Pitt wine war July 29, 2024 Brad Pitt has demanded to know who he is in business with after half of his hip wine brand Chateau Miraval, sold by his former partner Angelina Jolie to exiled Russian billionaire Yuri Shefler, ended up in a secretive Jersey trust.
Guy Richie’s The ministry for Ungentlemanly warfare is a riot July 25, 2024 Henry Cavill has been a contender for the role of James Bond for some time, offering some fine auditions in the form of 2015’s The Man from UNCLE and Mission: Impossible Fallout. His latest does nothing to weaken that link, with an action film that is said to have inspired Ian Fleming’s 007. Directed by [...]
Mnemonic review: Complicité smash is back after 25 years July 25, 2024 Mnemonic | National Theatre Mnemonic, a play about the strange, imaginative act of remembering, is given an extra extra-textual layer in this 25 year revival, as much a rumination on the original as it is a restaging. A production by legendary theatre company Complicité, it’s a thick tangle of overlapping stories, as densely packed as [...]
The Hot Wing King at the National Theatre is a spicy play July 23, 2024 Memphis-born Katori Hall is a cultural juggernaut. Audiences may be familiar with her previous work, such as the magnificent, Olivier-winning play The Mountaintop, which imagines the final night of Martin Luther King, her collaboration on the book for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, or her foray into television with the enjoyably sleazy premium soap opera [...]
The British Pullman is hosting cabaret nights on its 1920s train July 23, 2024 Why do we all go giddy for the British Pullman? On paper, it’s just an old train, serving posh nosh, rolling on the same steel that ashen bankers do their daily schlep. And yet when Belmond’s Pullman is uttered something funny happens: pupils flare, envy foams. Atavistic instincts signal to the listener that being aboard [...]