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| | | Carbuncles and King Charles: was the royal family's meddling supertroll right about architecture? | | by Oliver Wainwright Sep 28, 2022 | | He was the comedy villain of architecture, dismissed for his kitsch follies and architecturally illiterate outbursts. But has Charles III actually been proved right? ‘The most prominent architecture critic in the world” is how the New York Times once described King Charles III. It was 1989, and the then Prince of Wales was enjoying a wave of publicity after the launch of his spiritual crusade against the heresies of modern architecture. It was a high-profile, three-pronged attack, comprising a prime-time 75-minute BBC documentary, a dedicated V&A exhibition, and an accompanying coffee table book, grandly titled A Vision of Britain.
As architecture criticism goes, it was an unprecedented assault. “The prince’s performance, even sermon, was startling by television standards,” wrote critic Charles Jencks, “and I don’t know of any comparable use of the medium in our time. He looked straight into the camera, and six million viewers’ eyes, and told them what was wrong with them and what they should do about it.” The prince relished his position as the high priest of taste. He gleefully scolded the royally chartered professions of architecture and town planning for creating “godforsaken cities” littered with “huge, blank and impersonal” buildings. His words were carefully tuned to grab headlines. Birmingham city centre was damned as “a monstrous concrete maze,” with a library that looked like “a place where books are incinerated, not kept”. The brutalist National Theatre on the South Bank was “a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the middle of London”. The British Library looked “more like the assembly hall of an academy for secret police”. Continue reading... | | | | | The Old Man review – Jeff Bridges can barely put his socks on, but he sure can shoot | | by Rebecca Nicholson Sep 28, 2022 | | Bridges plays an ex-CIA agent who has been in hiding for decades. Now, he’s paranoid old enemies are out to get him. Are they? Of course! The first episode of The Old Man (Disney+) is a little misleading. It sets itself up as a meaty action thriller in the vein of Taken, with Jeff Bridges as the tough guy slowly picking off his enemies. As “Dan Chase” (though his name is prone to changing for reasons that soon become evident) Bridges cuts a lonely figure, rambling around a quiet house with only his dogs for company. There is ample medication by the bed. He struggles to put his socks on. He is haunted by memories of his late wife, who regularly unsettles his dreams. While his bones may be creaking, this old man obviously knows his way around a gun. Nothing is as it seems. Dan speaks to his daughter Emily regularly by phone, but then puts the phone in the microwave and turns it on. (What setting do you use to fry lines of communication? Popcorn or jacket potato?) His dogs are more than beloved pets. And he gives Better Call Saul’s hitman, Mike Ehrmantraut, a run for his money when it comes to DIY home security solutions. Is he paranoid, or are they really out to get him? Continue reading... | | | | | Save Lowry's Going to the Match for public, urges Salford mayor | | by Harriet Sherwood Arts and culture correspondent Sep 28, 2022 | | Plea to wealthy footballers and clubs to help buy auctioned painting to stop it disappearing into private collection The mayor of Salford has urged wealthy football players and clubs to consider buying LS Lowry’s painting Going to the Match when it is auctioned next month to prevent the “huge tragedy and scandal” of it disappearing from public view. The 1953 work by one of Britain’s best known and best-loved painters is expected to smash records when it is sold by the Professional Footballers’ Association next month. Christie’s, the auction house handling the sale, estimates it will fetch up to £8m. Continue reading... | | | | | | | |
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