It feels like the only film anyone’s been talking about recently is The Great Gatsby. Given that even the release of the films’ multiple trailers created international news stories, it seemed inevitable that not everyone was going to love it. So, what does Deborah Ross say to the film’s critics? ‘You can tell them to go hang’. Gatsby, she says, is ‘fantastically enjoyable, and a blast. It is wild and rampant and thrilling.’ So there you go – listen to our critic, not anyone else’s.
Desert Island Discs is one of Radio 4’s crowd-pullers but, as Kate Chisholm points out in this week’s radio review, the format ‘ is not best designed for conversational revelations or deep-seated insights’. Nevertheless, when Damian Hirst appeared on this week’s episode, it was hard to believe that there was nothing more ‘behind the dots, dead cows, sharks and maggots’ of his artwork.
‘At the close of the first night of Wozzeck at the Coliseum there was a longer dead silence than I can remember after any operatic performance I have been to, and when applause began it sounded reluctant’, says Michael Tanner. The music and production were both impressive. So what was the problem? Partly that the characters’ behaviour is so appalling that it’s hard to look beyond that and appreciate the music. ‘Can an audience really enjoy watching people in uncomfortable non-pseudo misery’, he wonders. The trailer which the ENO released ahead of its debut might make things clearer.
The BBC’s latest prime time series is a five-part thriller about a serial killer. So far, so normal for a glossy drama. But where The Fall strays from the ordinary is that the killer is an ex-Calvin Klein underwear model, while the police inspector is ‘a still-very-foxy-looking Gillian Anderson (out of X-Files)’. Is it any good? James Delingpole can’t quite make his mind up, so here’s a clip so you can see what you make of it.
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