Director defends Bale over four-letter tirade
An expletive-laden rant by Batman star Christian Bale on the set of Terminator: Salvation was dismissed as "just a moment that passed" by the film's assistant director.
Inside Arts & Entertainment
The Longest Trip Home, By John Grogan
Conventional wisdom holds that you have to hook a reader in your first paragraph, page or chapter. Perhaps John Grogan figures that he has cut himself a bit of slack from such rules by the international success of Marley & Me, his tale of one man and his dog. For the opening sections of the American writer's second volume of memoirs feel overly familiar and flat.
The Cardinall's Musick/Andrew Carwood, Wigmore Hall, London (Rated 3/ 5 )
Near ideal for chamber music and song recitals, the intimate acoustics of the Wigmore Hall might be thought to lack spaciousness enough for unaccompanied choral singing. Not even the accomplished line-up of Andrew Carwood's choir, The Cardinall's Musick, it seemed, could entirely avoid generating a fierce, dry edge to their sound at climactic moments. None the less, their latest appearance in this venue proved an inspiring experience.
Final cut for Hollywood's favourite dog
Once the must-have accessory, the terrier that appeared in a Hitchcock film is in danger of becoming extinct
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US hails British theatre invasion
Transatlantic imports are enjoying critical and commercial success in New York's theatreland
- Spring Awakening, Lyric Theatre, London (Rated 5/ 5 )
- Three Short Works, Royal Opera House, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
- First Night: Shun-kin, Barbican Theatre, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
- On The Waterfront: Steven Berkoff's story
Palladio, Royal Academy of Arts, London (Rated 2/ 5 )
Any visitor to London's Royal Academy of Arts comes charged with expectations that he or she will see a show that combines intellectual merit with visual panache. There have been many past triumphs, from the great show devoted to the arts of Africa, to the more recent survey of Western portraiture in collaboration with the Grand Palais in Paris.
Rubinstein: The Demon, Barbican Hall, London
Operatic history is strewn with the casualties of changing fashion. Anton Rubinstein's The Demon – the second offering in the Mariinsky Theatre's brief residency at the Barbican – is just such a piece: a bold, often innovative creation, precursor to so much that would quickly overshadow it. With tolling tam-tam and a nod to Arrigo Boito's Mefistofele, it roars into its choral Prologue, spirits of Heaven and Hell vying for supremacy. Valery Gergiev's Mariinsky Chorus are at once the dark, grainy, genuine article. There's a touch of Tchaikovsky's Francesca da Rimini in the whirlwind, and Rimsky-Korsakov's ornate way with vocal lines will be a feature of the opening scenes. You can see why it did, and still does, carry the wow factor in Russia.
Why comedians are dubbing Hollywood
In the UK, if we think of improvised comedy we normally think of Paul Merton. But, for the next six weeks, theatres up and down the land will have a chance to experience a new American improv export with a recognisably British cast that doesn't include Merton or his improv chums. Marcus Brigstocke, Phill Jupitus, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Hattie Hayridge are among a rotating cast who will be supplying new dialogue to old movies for a show called Totally Looped, putting a new perspective on idea that started out as prank at a US college radio station.
Architect dies hours after his wife gives birth
Tributes paid to Jan Kaplicky, designer behind string of futuristic landmarks
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FIVE BEST FILMS
Rachel Getting Married, 15
Filmed with a hand-held digital camera, this is a hyper-naturalistic expos� of the mores of Connecticut’s wealthy and dysfunctional, with Anne Hathaway particularly excellent as the neurotic, brittle and just-out-of-rehab young woman spoiling her sister’s wedding party. Nationwide
Milk, 15
Sean Penn gives a magnetic performance as Harvey Milk, the politician and gay-rights activist who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978. As well as a polished, conventionally well-made biopic, ‘Milk’ is an entertaining social-history lesson, re-creating the excitement and tumult of the times. Nationwide
The Wrestler, 15
Mickey Rourke, sporting an Eighties peroxide hairdo, skin the colour of chicken tikka and a hearing aid, gives a career-best performance as an ageing and battered American pro-wrestler whose glory years are long behind him in this sad, touching and truthful film. Nationwide
Revolutionary Road, 15
Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio star as a dissatisfied, warring couple in this consistently absorbing and occasionally heart-rending adaptation of the Richard Yates novel.
Nationwide
Slumdog Millionaire, 15
An antic, and romantic, fable about the joys and nightmares of childhood, about a boy’s search for love, and about a teeming, terrifying city on the rise. Dev Patel stars as Jamal, the 18-year-old recounting his life as a “slumdog” on the streets of Mumbai. Nationwide