Movie: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

Finally caught The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou tonight. Its a great film but it is nearing its main run in London cinemas so I saw it in the bowels of a cinema on Leicester Square. This was rather unfortunate as given its depth underground, the red lights that were throughout the cinema and the smell of bleach that permeated the air, you could have been forgiven for thinking that it was an "adult" cinema... But this was Leicester Square not Piccadilly Circus circa 1970 so it was very legitimate commercial fare, although the film itself was a relief to be a little different from your standard issue three-act movie comedy/drama...

Popular posts from this blog

Opera and full frontal nudity: Rigoletto

Image
David McVicar's oddly modern production of Rigoletto is back at the Royal Opera House.

This modern and minimalist dark production has evolved over the years. It is better lit now but there is still an orgy and full frontal nudity within the first thirty minutes. This enables anyone not in the stalls an excellent view of a flaccid penis and a nicely shaved bush. But as time goes it seems more and more superfluous to the main focus of this tragedy of a court jester who seeks revenge. Here is hoping that the production continues to evolve...

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner keeps the music well paced. Dimitri Platanias in the title role sounded great and received a rapturous applause for his interpretation of the role. You get a sense more of the doting father rather than the court jester or cursed man here.

Vittorio Grigolo plays the Duke and sounds too lovely to be the cad the role calls for, but it is hard not to like when he is on stage anyway. And it is easier to understand the…
Read more...

Fluffing it: Rouge @Underbellyfest

Image
It's not enough for a circus act nowadays to offer a series of acrobatic feats. Nowadays, they are pushing all sorts of conventions. There's the all-male, the all-female, the all minimalist. Rouge is the all gender fluid pan-sexual circus for grown-ups who like a bit of everything. But only if that everything includes a little bit of nudity and a bit of mild titillation. 
The men wear eyeliner, the pairings are male-female, male-male and female-female.Strong female types abound throughout. It's a unique concept that's marred by its own timidity. It's currently playing at the Underbelly Festival on the Southbank.
The performers are interesting enough. There's the aerial trapeze, the ring, and the strap. All are deftly executed. There's a terrific flame swallowing routine which seems all the more intense in the confines of the Spiegeltent.
An inventive sequence happens where the performer is wearing a lampshade and combines hula hoops with a frantic strip dance …
Read more...

Previews: Danelaw @ORLTheatre

Image
Written fifteen years ago as an absurdist comedy, a portrayal of an attempt by a far-right group to set up a white-supremacist state in East Anglia could today be seen more like a documentary of today’s troubling times. But there is nothing like a funny and timely reminder of the deadly threat that far-right groups still pose to this country.
Partially inspired by the neo-Nazi group Combat 18’s attempts to set up such a homeland in the 1990s, it follows an MI6 agent’s attempt to infiltrate the group. 
But a funny thing happens on the way to set up a white-supremacist enclave as a gruesome murder is committed on some waste ground in Harlow.

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day either. But Peter Hamilton’s play, Danelaw is currently playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 5 October. See it and laugh nervously...
Read more...