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West Side Story (2021)

Not many directors would risk remaking such a celebrated musical on stage and screen as West Side Story but Steven Spielberg has the chutzpah so to do. Does he pull it off? Yes and no. Yes, he is brilliant film maker and sensibly sticks to  the original. No, because the original score and [...]

December 15, 2021 // 0 Comments

My TV sporting weekend

I’m not the biggest fan of Formula One, regarding it as no more than a sponsored procession and lacking that essential ingredient of sport – ebb and flow. However, the publicity got the better of me and at 1.00 pm for the final Grand Prix at Abu Dhabi  I was tuned into Radio 5 and Channel [...]

December 13, 2021 // 0 Comments

More viewings

My picture fest continued in London with 2 visits to the Royal Academy and a view of the pictures on view at the Richard Green Gallery. I visited the Summer Show at the RA. In trying to reposition themselves for a younger audience, standards have dropped and most of the pictures –  garish in [...]

December 12, 2021 // 0 Comments

Modern life (Part 37)

Completely by chance, the other day I found myself ruminating upon which was the exact moment at which I began “falling off the pace” of modern life. This was against a background in which, in casual conversations over past decades, I have long used 1985 at my answer to this question because [...]

December 11, 2021 // 0 Comments

The Courtauld Collection

In the week I saw the refurbished Courtauld Collection which by and large the art critics appreciated. I was underwhelmed. Matters were not helped as the taxi driver who took me there from Marylebone was one of those ‘miserable old gits’ who – when he was not stuck in a traffic jam when [...]

December 10, 2021 // 0 Comments

Sickert/A Life in Art – Walker Gallery

Yesterday I travelled up to Liverpool to view the Walter Sickert exhibition at the Walker Gallery. There are two misconceptions about Sickert – that he was quintessentially English and that he was our leading post-impressionist. In fact he was born in Munich in 1860 of Danish and Irish [...]

December 8, 2021 // 0 Comments

Valley of Tears

Last Friday I watched the final episode in the present series on More4. A further series featuring the Egyptian offensive in the southern  front in the Yom Kippur  is in production. I have written  before that films made by both sides in World War Two were motivated by propaganda and this is the [...]

December 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

The (no so) Good Life – a review

Yesterday I travelled down from London in order to attend a touring performance of a new stage version of the highly-popular BBC (Bob Larbey and John Esmonde-written) television comedy sit-com The Good Life (1975- 1978) at the Chichester Festival Theatre. In all honesty I was not expecting a great [...]

December 5, 2021 // 0 Comments

A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush

Last night – upon a last-minute whim and with not a little anticipatory excitement – my wife and I went to the small-stage Minerva at the Chichester Festival Theatre for the last performance of three at the venue given by Sarah-Louise Young of her one-woman show conceived with Russell Lucas [...]

December 4, 2021 // 0 Comments

My art week

I have just finished Art of the Extreme 1905-1915 by Philip Hook the ex-Director of Impressionism and Modern Art at Sothebys. His background is sales. He writes well. He is on safer ground discussing the great collectors Sergei Shchukin and Ivan Morozov in Russia and the emerging super rich ones [...]

December 3, 2021 // 0 Comments

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