The Desert The desert is in the heart of your brother. Your brother doesn’t even read poetry, but keeps the desert’s book, with that dumb title, where you’ll see when you next scrounge dinner. But the desert’s just one of these kids who make bad jokes at a poem’s expense, you say. Your brother sticks […]
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Avatar (2009), dir. James Cameron
According to the inverse law of action movie length vs. depth, every too familiar nuance of this nearly three-hour ‘epic’ can be recounted in a couple of breaths: A disabled ex-soldier is sent in to improve relations with an indigenous population who stand in the way of some economically precious natural resource. Inevitably, he grows […]
Rock ‘n’ Roll, Tom Stoppard, The Library Theatre
Rock ‘n’ Roll by Tom Stoppard dir. Chris Honer Manchester Library Theatre 13th Feb 2009 – 14th Mar 2009 Max is an old-school Marxist intellectual. Jan is his rock-loving PhD student, returning to his native Prague in ’68 just as the Soviet invasion rolls in. Rather than protest or consent to sign his mates’ […]
Pierre Martory, The Landscapist trans. by John Ashbery (Carcanet Press) £12.95
There’s nothing but a book in a foreign language. Somebody read it and shut it on the table, Forgot it, went away. (‘Without Rhyme or Reason’) In the introduction to this collection of the translations he has been publishing since the mid-sixties, John Ashbery addresses the implied tragedy of this image: “And after I began […]
Tell Tale Signs – Bob Dylan
The devout would be forgiven for feeling the Cult of Dylan has lost some exclusivity in recent years. The release of two very hip, very high profile films (plus another, only slightly Masked and Anonymous mess) have been only one face of an accessible coolness also marked by the first volume of Dylan’s Chronicles and his […]