This is the first is a new series of monthly columns by Emily Rhodes. CultureKicks will also soon have ‘What I’ve been watching…’ and ‘What I’ve been listening to…’ columns to go alongside it. I saw in the New Year up in Scotland, where some friends were getting married on [...]
What’s your favourite scene in Tim Burton’s best film, Ed Wood? I figure everyone has one. Perhaps it’s the scene in which the round-eyed film director Mr Wood (Johnny Depp) watches the washed-up horror movie star Bela Lugosi (Martin Landau) do his hypnotic Count Dracula ‘come to me!’ hand gesture. [...]
A dozen teenagers hover around easels, taping up cartridge paper, fumbling sticks of charcoal, blethering. A teacher—me, as it happens—directs two heaters towards an empty stool at the centre of the studio in opposition to the Winter chill. A small woman with long hair enters, naked beneath a dressing gown. [...]
Today sees the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride & Prejudice, one of the most enduring of all English novels, and seemingly so resilient a romance that it can survive everything from erotic parody to an invasion of zombies. One of the hashtags doing the rounds on Twitter last [...]
In Andrzej Klimowski’s pop art-inspired poster for Taxi Driver (1976), the film’s anti-hero Travis Bickle is portrayed as a man out of time – connected to, but somehow out of sync with, the rest of the city as it rushes past him. It’s the perfect visual metaphor for Seventies New [...]
Sometimes we can’t see what is in front of our own noses. We need to step back and take in the bigger picture before whatever-it-is can make sense. And so the gigantic year-long festival The Rest is Noise at London’s Southbank Centre has launched at just the right time. It [...]