The name ‘Pablo Picasso’ has become idiomatic for so much: from superficial reflections on talent to car brands. But its associations have also become so completely flattened into a very narrow understanding of what this artist was all about, and why his work was important to the world. […]
WHAT WOULD YOU do if you discovered that your elderly mum, in her hand-knitted cardigan with her arthritic fingers, has had a secret life that is of great concern to the authorities? A life that involved nuclear plans and spies, sex and political manipulation? You might try to […]
VERY RARELY DO you find a film that is effectively a piece of advocacy work, so searingly well made and intensely carefully constructed that it surpasses the threshold of actuality and turns into great art. Nadine Labaki’s essay in Amharic (with subtitles) on poverty and disenfranchisement in contemporary […]
WHEN YOU WATCH the political rhetoric being thrust hither and yon on social media and other young platforms, the one thing that you notice is its lack of nuance. Political diatribe in South Africa in 2019 paints white people as racists. Blanketly. Utterly regardless of their history or […]
WHAT DO YOU do when the love of your life is swept away by a big old auntie with a fortune, a hazy tale of connection to her and all sorts of plans to marry her to someone else? Why, you ambush the property with no less than […]
WHEN THE UNIVERSE presents a possibility in your life that is unequivocally wrong, but still, it’s there, what do you do? A chance encounter with a literary letter when she was down and out and had no where to turn, represented an important turning point for American writer, […]
WHAT DO YOU do when the proverbial gift horse looks your way, and makes you an offer you can’t refuse? Earl Stone (Clint Eastwood) is an ordinary kind of 90-year-old divorced guy, who loves to garden much more than he likes family responsibilities. He won’t say no to […]
SHE’S PETULANT AND childish, given to fits of rage and gout, and free enough in her sense of authority to lie on the floor and bawl or arbitrarily end someone’s working career, on a whim. Meet Queen Anne, a larger-than-life articulation of the unleashed lascivious baud and out-of-control […]
WHO WOULD YOU hire to be there for you, as you embark on a concert tour where you will be performing to an audience of the most hostile community possible? Pianist and composer Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) had an eye out for the meanest most streetwise racist […]
OCCASIONALLY, WHEN YOU ignore the hype and opt to see a film that has not been aggressively marketed or thrust in your face, you come across a true gem. Paul Dano’s Wildlife touches on the complexity of gender in an age of misogyny and broken dreams, with the […]
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