| | | | | | | Moulin Rouge at 20: the dazzling musical that continues to shine | | by Guy Lodge Jun 1, 2021 | | Baz Luhrmann’s glittery spectacle remains as captivating as it was in 2001 thanks to a magnetic star turn from Nicole Kidman and its relentless energy The musical is back! Again! As cinemas resume business as (sort of) usual in the latter stages of a pandemic, 2021 is being hyped as some kind of banner year for that most long-suffering of genres – one that, between the instantly legendary calamity of Cats and such lesser recent failures as The Prom, has recently been enduring a distinctly sub-golden age. Amid upcoming film versions of Dear Evan Hansen, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie and Tick, Tick … Boom!, hopes are particularly high that the presumed box-office success of Jon M Chu’s In the Heights this summer and Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story at Christmas will relegitimise the grand-scale studio musical. Less commercially minded cinephiles, meanwhile, are awaiting the return of French auteur Leos Carax, set to open the Cannes festival in July with his thrillingly strange-looking Sparks-scored extravaganza Annette. Related: Shrek at 20: an unfunny and overrated low for blockbuster animation Continue reading... | | | | | | | Long Players, edited by Tom Gatti review – a new spin on an old favourite | | by Dorian Lynskey Jun 1, 2021 | | Adapted from a New Statesman column, this collection of writers’ love letters to their most treasured albums soars when it ventures away from the canon It must be about 20 years since I read my first article about “the death of the album”. Technology gave birth to it in 1948 with the launch of the 12-inch vinyl disc and technology was expected to kill it by unbundling the parts from the whole: Napster begat iTunes begat Spotify. Yet while sales nosedived, artists doubled down. Albums such as Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly or Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City are every bit as substantial and satisfying as a 1970s opus, while the likes of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift have made the transition from hitmakers to album artists. No matter how many singles or EPs someone releases, fans on social media will still ask: “When is the album dropping?” It turns out that the basic concept of a coherent package of songs is far more resilient than the doomsayers imagined. Even when untethered from physical formats, it remains the narrative engine, the definitive statement, the main event. Music journalism has fared less well, as unlimited streaming has made the consumer-guide function of album reviews redundant. Yet thoughtful writing about classic albums thrives in places such as Pitchfork’s Sunday Review series and Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 imprint, serving the same purpose as sleevenote essays. The question they answer is not: “What should I buy?” but: “What am I missing?” Continue reading... | | | | | Samson Kambalu: New Liberia review – all hail the elephants of hope | | by Adrian Searle Jun 1, 2021 | | Modern Art Oxford
An Oxford don in reverse, sticky situationism and a icon of Malawian independence are among the cultural collisions explored in this Fourth Plinth contender’s show
Here they stand, two big black elephants, their trunks raised in greeting. Elephants never forget, and these symbols of ancestral wisdom are clothed in sewn-together Oxford academic gowns, their ridiculous tassels forming the animals’ tails. Referencing the dances of the Nyau secret society of the Chewa people in Malawi, who wear costumes fashioned from cut up materials, the elephants stand beneath national flags, themselves spliced together and reimagined as colourful multinational banners. Symbols of hope, then, abstractions of a better world in Samson Kambalu’s New Liberia at Modern Art Oxford. Leaning against the walls are cinema signs, loosely describing the action in a couple of the jerky, black and white short films projected on the walls in another gallery. “In a distant land by the water, a man crouches down to sculpt leaves on a tree out of thin air,” reads one. And there he is, the artist earnest at his task, picking at the air as the leaves appear as though by magic on the little tree, in one of Kambalu’s short, improvised films. Many of these hokey little routines and filmic skits, which he has been making for years, can also be found on the artist’s YouTube channel. In another he appears to be walking right through the brick buttresses of a cathedral, a feat only made possible by stopping and restarting the camera. And here he is again making an 18th-century drawing (so the caption tells us), but all he appears to be doing is making frantic, swiping gestures over a large drawing board in a fusty room. Continue reading... | | | | | | | 'They had soul': Anton Corbijn on 40 years shooting Depeche Mode | | by Alexis Petridis Jun 1, 2021 | | He thought they were pop lightweights – then turned them into moody megastars. The photographer recalls his adventures with the band, from desert trips to drug-induced near-death experiences By his own cheerful admission, Anton Corbijn’s relationship with Depeche Mode did not get off to a flying start. It was 1981 and Corbijn was the NME’s new star photographer, lured to the UK from his native Netherlands by the sound of British post-punk, particularly Joy Division. His subsequent black and white portraits of the quartet tramping Manchester’s snow-covered streets became the most iconic images of their brief career, and Corbijn had gone on to take equally celebrated shots of everyone from Captain Beefheart to David Bowie. Continue reading... | | | | | | | Rishi Sunak reveals he is avid viewer of Emily in Paris and Bridgerton | | by Lucy Campbell Jun 1, 2021 | | Chancellor says in Radio Times interview that his TV tastes ‘are probably not quite the same’ as fellow cabinet members
A well-known Star Wars fan he might be, but Rishi Sunak appears to be a man of rather eclectic taste, having revealed that he has spent “a lot of time” indulging in the likes of Bridgerton and Emily in Paris over the past year. Discussing his viewing habits with the Radio Times, the chancellor also told the magazine that he was an “enormous fan” of the BBC and said his “tastes are probably not quite the same” as some of his cabinet colleagues. Continue reading... | | | | | Authors to earn royalties on secondhand books for first time | | by Alison Flood Jun 1, 2021 | | AuthorSHARE, a royalty fund set up by two used booksellers with support from industry bodies, is calling for more retailers to participate Unlike regular book sales or library borrowing, authors do not receive a penny from the sale of secondhand editions of their works – but a new scheme dreamed up by used booksellers is set to change this for the first time. William Pryor, founder of Somerset-based used bookseller Bookbarn International, came up with the idea to pay authors royalties on used book sales in 2015, but needed a wider partnership to make it work. World of Books Group, which describes itself as the UK’s largest retailer of used books, then got involved to help Pryor create AuthorSHARE, a royalty fund worth £200,000 for the scheme’s first year. Continue reading... | | | | | Mare of Easttown finale review – Kate Winslet drama is a stunning, harrowing success | | by Lucy Mangan Jun 1, 2021 | | The actor’s turn as a complex, fallible detective has been a privilege to witness, in a murder mystery that kept us guessing right to the profoundly moving end In interviews, Kate Winslet always said it wasn’t a thriller. And she was right. Yes, Mare of Easttown (Sky Atlantic) began with a murder in a small, bleak Pennsylvania town and Winslet’s police detective Mare Sheehan being called upon to investigate. But it was almost immediately clear that the seven-part drama was setting up to be so much more – and even clearer soon after that it was likely to succeed in all its endeavours. It was a character study, of how a woman ground down by life after the loss of a son to drugs and suicide, the consequent divorce from her husband and raising of her grandson in the face of a custody battle with his mother (her son’s former girlfriend, rehabbed but fragile) endures. Continue reading... | | | | | |
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