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Review: English National Opera - The Elixir of Love
15th March | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
Sometimes misfortune can have its upsides. As any self-respecting devotee will tell you many opera plots revolve around the dramatic consequences of single quirks of fate. However, whereas these events normally are restricted to the goings-on on stage, Jonathan Miller's new staging of Gaetano Donizetti's L’Elisir d'Amore has had a fairly dramatic time behind the scenes as well. After opening to generally positive reviews, original lead John Tessier came down...
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Mad Men Series 3, Episode 8 - Souvenir: A Review
11th March | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
It’s fair to say that we’re into Mad Men’s mid-season lull, the quiet few weeks before everything builds up again to a dramatic climax. Not that there wasn’t much to capture the interest in this episode but, like last week’s one it seemed to be a subdued affair.
Really this was an episode where the women got the chance to shine, or more accurately their hair-dos did. From the shot early... -
Review: Crazy Heart - More Lazy Than Crazy
10th March | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
Crazy Heart is probably going to be remembered as the film that finally got Jeff Bridges an Oscar (38 years after his first nomination), but does it deserve to be remembered for more than that? It’s hard to imagine that this low-budget, unassuming portrait of a faded country star would find much of an audience outside of country music fans without him (and it’s debatable as to how much star-power...
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Review: Alice in Wonderland - Frankly Maddening
9th March | 4 comments | 1 person likes this
When it was announced that Tim Burton was going to turn Alice in Wonderland into a big budget 3D movie for Disney, there was a fair amount of excitement from both critics and the public. Although he has his fair share of detractors, it's impossible to deny that Burton has a distinctive sense of visual style and can create genuinely wondrous moments in his films, plus with the involvement of...
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Mad Men Series 3, Episode 7 - Seven Twenty Three: A Review
5th March | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
It was inevitable that this week’s Mad Men wasn’t going to live up to the explosive lawnmower related fun of the last episode, however, it still felt like a rather subdued affair – which is a bit surprising considering the episode’s director Daisy Von Scherler Meyer is best known for light-weight gaudy fluff like largely-forgotten Jimi Mistry-vehicle The Guru. Although the episode did include one major revelation, being that... Peggy...
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Mad Men Series 3, Episode 6 - Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency: A Review
26th February | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
Anton Chekhov once said that if a gun is introduced in the first act of a play, it has to be fired by the end of the second act. I never thought that the rule would be applied to a John Deere mini-tractor, but Mad Men decided to give it a go (although as Roger Sterling later said something like this has at some point had to have happened before...
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Review: A Single Man - A Thing of Beauty
26th February | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
Given something of a boost following Colin Firth’s best actor win at the BAFTAs, A Single Man is fashion designer Tom Ford’s filmmaking debut, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel (hailed as a key work in the gay liberation movement) that follows Literature Professor George, an English ex-pat living in LA, through a day in his life. Although this is no ordinary day, still feeling the pain of losing...
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Review: Yeasayer - Odd Blood
25th February | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
Brooklyn hipsters Yeasayer came to prominence among the Pitchfork reading crowd with their debut album All Hour Cymbals in 2007. Mixing Prog-rock instrumentation with Afro-beat rhythms and a general sense of doom-mongering, it’s hardly surprising that they didn’t reach a wider audience beyond that, despite high profile tours with the likes of Arcade Fire, MGMT and Bat for Lashes. In fact, after the brilliance of their live-show where the bizarrely...
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Mad Men Series 3, Episode 5 - The Fog: A Review
19th February | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
In the Draper household even the birth of a child is a gloomy affair. Betty finally had the unwanted offspring from last season’s one-off bit of comfort sex with Don, and nobody – apart from Bobby - seemed that thrilled about it. With this being the third time for them there was definitely a feeling of ‘been there, done that’ right from the moment Betty calmly announced to Don that...
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Princess and The Frog, Ponyo and Percy Jackson - A Half-Term Review Roundup
16th February | 0 comments | 1 person likes this
With the kids being out of school we’re faced with the usual bombardment of family-friendly films and it can be hard to know what the best choice can be. With the price of cinema admission being so high, and with so many kids films being pretty ropey, it’s probably tempting to think of avoiding the cinema altogether. What follows are a few short reviews of the options for this half...
