The Arts Section | the-arts-section.blogspot.com

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:05:00 PDT

WHEN Raiders Of The Lost Ark came out in 1981, the trio of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford were forever etched onto the annals of cinema as an unstoppable force. In Lucas they had...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

The Savages

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:05:00 PDT

DYSFUNCTIONAL families are big business in an American film industry ridiculously bent on exploiting the supposed grim realities that exist in relationships. Concepts of reality in the...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Iron Man

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:07:00 PDT

PICTURE the scene: King of the fairies Al Gore wakes up in the middle of the night sweating and screaming carbon neutrally about a terrible nightmare. He remembers horrifying images of incredibly...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Family Guys Presents: Blue Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:52:00 PDT

A LONG time ago, yet somehow in the future, a couple of Star Wars loving nerds decided to make a cartoon of their favourite film. Sounds like something worth avoiding as far as the Hoth System,...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Coldplay - Violet Hill

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 05 May 2008 06:44:00 PDT

THEY'VE been described as a incredibly morose group, producing music for students who still wet the bed, and the Dulux equivalent of comatose beige. Like them or loathe them, Coldplay are back with...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Alvin And The Chipmunks

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 03:27:00 PDT

THE once great Hollywood film industry is officially on its knees. Creatively spent, full of unhappy striking writers, and now left to rummage through the toy box and exhuming the mothballed cartoons...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

QI: The B Series

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 07:09:00 PDT

TAKE one legendary comedian slash actor, renowned for his magnificent wit and, let's be honest, really Quite Intelligence (Stephen Fry). Mix said national treasure with yet another part comedian part...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

The Darjeeling Limited

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:17:00 PDT

WES Anderson walks into a bar clad in a white suit, spills his typically pastel-coloured smoothie on his lap, and leaves the bar without a mark on it. Not the set-up for a woeful comedic turn, but...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Stardust

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 03:09:00 PDT

IT seems virtually every movie trailer these days features the same tag line designed to cash in on the void left by the books of the boy wizard: ‘it's up one boy to save the world.' So it was only a...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

The Counterfeiters

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 10:42:00 PDT

KATE WINSLET famously proclaimed in Ricky Gervais' Extras that any film about the Holocaust is virtually guaranteed a gaggle of shiny gongs come awards season. And yep, The Counterfeiters did in...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Doctor Who - Voyage of the Damned

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:11:00 PDT

CHRISTMAS may be a time for goodwill to all men, but that old saying conveniently avoids 900-year-old Converse plimsoll-wearing Timelords. Funnily enough, it also leaves out robot angels with killer...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Walk the Line

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 08:26:00 PST

EVER since Elvis copped it on the crapper, the mix of pop and problems has excited almost as many TV movies as broken homes and bowel cancer. Musicians, we are constantly reminded, sing songs of...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Nicholas Nickleby, Gielgud Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:17:00 PST

NICHOLAS Nickleby is an unmissable treat this festive season and is as buttery and nutty as a mince pie, served with a schooner of sweet sherry. Although darker than the original 1980 adaptation,...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

The Lilia Kopylova Interview

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 04:12:00 PST

ARRIVING at the London dance studio to meet Strictly Come Dancing’s Lilia Kopylova, I felt like I'd stepped into a Dickensian nightmare. Wiry women with ramrod backs and steel abs were screeching at...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Surf's Up

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 15:09:00 PST

SURF'S UP is another animated film about those cute and adorable penguins that we fell in love with during March of the Penguins and Happy Feet. And this new flick even manages to parody a...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

The Simpsons Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 12:05:00 PST

THE Simpsons stormed the big screen with a well-written script, filled with fast paced gags, great animation and fantastic set pieces. Yet for some reason its DVD release somehow manages to lose much...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

John Barrowman - Another Side

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 09:56:00 PST

ALBUM: JOHN BARROWMAN – Another Side (Sony BMG) THERE'S not a lot wrong with John Barrowman – the all-singing, all-dancing, American pansexual and saviour of the Universe (AKA TV’s Torchwood) – and...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Lee Mead - Lead Mead

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:12:00 PST

ALBUM: LEE MEAD - Lee Mead (Polydor) This debut album from Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest leading man is a fairly solid start to his recording career - but at times, this first effort is as...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:30:00 PST

SINGLE: AMY WINEHOUSE - Love Is A Losing Game (Island/Universal) This enchanting new single from Amy Winehouse's universally acclaimed album "Back To Black" is quite simply heartbreaking. It's...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Ricky Gervais: Fame

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 10:15:00 PST

A FEW months ago critics were gunning for Ricky Gervais, saying that he'd lost it and was no longer funny anymore – were they all having a laugh? Because not only was his third stand-up tour the...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Frankie Boyle, The Arts Theatre

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:20:00 PST

MOCK THE WEEK star Frankie Boyle does what few other comedians do with big sell-out tours. He tells jokes, brilliant jokes, one after the other and then goes home. And by stripping away all the...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Pirates of the Caribbean 3

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:51:00 PDT

IN the approaching months, it seems every film will have a digit after the title – a worryingly high digit, in most cases – like the first half of a catastrophic score line in which the second half...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

To Change China: Western Advisers In China

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 04:43:00 PDT

JONATHAN D. Spence, a British-born historian and Sterling Professor at Yale, sums up the motives for Westerners coming to China in a single sentence: "Implicit in most of their actions was a more...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Spider-Man 3

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 15 May 2007 14:21:00 PDT

IT seems that all superheroes have to be ‘dark' these days in order to demonstrate their utter seriousness and counteract ‘geek' tags thrown at them by those who don't regularly inhabit comic book...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.

Casino Royale

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Ward) — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 08:43:00 PDT

ON the big screen, Daniel Craig has shown himself capable of taking on a British icon: a man of cool, cruel resolve, mesmerising sex appeal and a deadly destructive way with dames. But that's...

A brilliant collection of witty and well-informed pieces on culture, arts, music, cinema, theatre, books and television reviews.