A widower takes a nostalgic journey from John o’Groats to Land’s End using his free bus pass in a well-acted but overly sentimental filmTry as I might, I couldn’t make friends with this weirdly unreal and sentimental Britmovie in the last-journey-with-…
‘I’m a one in a billion’ – how Diane Warren penned windswept power ballads for Cher, Gaga and Dion
She’s the queen of the power ballad mega hit – and has even written songs for Biden, Harris and Ringo Starr. Now the world’s most successful female songwriter is finally releasing her own albumAt the end of the 1990s, when Diane Warren was the unrivall…
Clowntime review – it’s a crime not to be funny in John Feffer’s dystopia
Online@theSpaceUKGuileless hero Christopher Blank is ‘born without a single funny bone in his body’ in a one-man play that paints a near future US in broad brushstrokesComedians becoming politicians and pundits. Politicians playing the lovable buffoon….
Spencer: first poster released for Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana film
Ahead of Venice premiere of Pablo Larraín’s biopic, teaser poster appears to show Diana weeping into enormous dressA first poster has been released for Spencer, the forthcoming film about three days in the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, starring Kri…
Candyman review – BLM horror reboot is superb confection of satire and scorn
Nia DaCosta’s quasi reboot develops the horror myth as an expression of rage against racism in the era of Black Lives MatterCandyman, in its first incarnation, stepped daintily out of the mirror in 1992, in writer-director Bernard Rose’s US-set version…
Boiling Point review – Stephen Graham bubbles in one-shot restaurant drama
This year’s Karlovy Vary saw the premiere of a dizzying single-take drama featuring a potent lead performance from Graham as a chef enduring a nightmarish eveningPhilip Barantini serves up a single-take headlong nightmare in this drama set in a restaur…
What exactly do Ian Botham and John Cleese offer ‘global Britain’?
The ex-cricketer and lapsed comedian have found new work in politics and TV respectively, but they are trading off old successes and even older opinionsIt’s easy to find out when Ian Botham last played cricket, because there is Wisden, but it’s hard to…
Ansel Adams, Brassaï and Bill Brandt sitting on a bench: Paul Joyce’s best photograph
‘Ansel asked me if I was using his “zone system”. When I said I had my own method, he said I was probably using his unconsciously’ In 1976, I was working at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. The great Hungarian-French photographer Brassaï had an ex…
How John Cage, the great disrupter, had the last laugh – by writing beautiful music
Late in life, maverick composer Cage decided to stop finding ‘alternatives to harmony’. The results have been rediscovered by a new generation of musiciansIn the summer of 1990 John Cage gave a lecture at the International New Music gathering in Darmst…
Mosquito State review – a torrid, original tone poem to late capitalism
Swarms of bloodsucking insects mirror the volatility of the markets in this thrilling drama of financial crisisThis highly original, visually torrid take on Wall Street and last decade’s global financial crisis celebrates the true masters of the univer…