Win a unique trip to the magical Fonterutoli Estate in Tuscany February 12, 2016 Chianti produces wines of global acclaim and has firmly earned its place amongst the greatest wine regions of the world. Alongside the new release of Siepi 2013, in association with wine travel company Winerist, the City PM Wine Club is excited to announce a new competition. One lucky winner will win a unique trip to [...]
Zoolander 2 wrote its own eugoogly when it put cameos before comedy February 11, 2016 Dir. Ben Stiller | ★★★☆☆ Over the last 15 years, Zoolander has boiled down in the public consciousness to its very essence, becoming less a movie than a handful of fondly remembered quotations. Its pop-cultural caché is so high that it’s easy to overlook its simple premise: the endearing, Chaplin-esque stupidity of its narcissistic leads. This [...]
Kate Moss, Cara Delevigne and Lily Cole are in Vogue at the National Portrait Gallery February 11, 2016 The National Portrait Gallery | ★★★★☆ The National Portrait Gallery’s Vogue 100 exhibition is an epic stroll through a century of photography from fashion’s undisputed powerhouse. The trail leads backwards, opening with vast prints of the most recognisable faces from today’s magazines; Cara Delevingne gives way to Lily Cole, who gives way to Kate Moss. The [...]
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies review – plus the rest of this week’s biggest film releases February 11, 2016 Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (15) | ★★☆☆☆ Dir: Burr Steers Rarely has a film been more self-explanatory than this horror comedy which re-imagines Jane Austen's classic in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, with both the Bennet sisters (including Lily James's Elizabeth) and Mr Darcy (Sam Riley) now highly trained to fend off the [...]
Battlefield at the Young Vic draws effective parallels between Syria and the Mahabharata February 11, 2016 Young Vic | ★★★☆☆ Can a 2,500-year old story tell us something new about the human condition? That was presumably one of the considerations of 90-year old playwright Peter Brook and his long time collaborator Marie-Helene Estienne when they returned to an Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Having already told the story through their nine-hour 1989 [...]
Deadpool film review: fresh and funny but fails to break new ground February 11, 2016 Dir. Tim Miller | ★★★☆☆ Deadpool was born out of the comic book nadir of the early 1990s, when super-hero books tended towards the morose and the self-indulgent. It was a time when muscles were big and boobs were bigger. Rob Liefeld's wise-cracking mercenary Deadpool, AKA Wade Wilson, was a breath of fresh air amidst the [...]
Need some Valentine’s Day ideas? We’ve got you covered with our expert guide to the perfect date February 10, 2016 It’s almost Valentine’s Day, the yearly celebration of big kisses on the mouth, so you know what that means: candle-lit dinners, small boxes of chocolate cubes, asking your beloved to turn all the lights on and off in quick succession to create a strobe effect as you dance every kind of forbidden sex-dance there is. But [...]
The Ford Focus RS is the perfect blend of practicality, performance and visceral thrills February 8, 2016 The verdict Design | ★★★★☆ Performance | ★★★★★ Practicality | ★★★★ Value | ★★★★☆ A working class hero is something to be,” declared John Lennon in 1971. Was it mere coincidence that Ford had just launched the Escort RS1600, a road-legal rally car that brought power-slides to the masses? OK, so, yes, it definitely was a coincidence, but I’m [...]
Trumbo sees Bryan Cranston peddling contraband. Again. February 4, 2016 Dir Jay Roach | ★★☆☆☆ Bryan Cranston plays a brilliant, put-upon middle-aged man who is forced into peddling contraband in order to provide for his family. This time his drug of choice isn’t meth but Hollywood scripts, which he’s banned from writing – along with dozens of others – because of his Communist party membership. [...]
Escaped Alone: Caryl Churchill’s incisive take on four women’s friendship has an absurdist streak February 4, 2016 Royal Court | ★★★★☆ At 77, Caryl Churchill isn't so much slowing down as paring down, Pinter-style. Lately, the veteran dramatist – prolific as ever – has been trimming her running times and discarding the grand experimental gestures of her early work, while keeping her wit and moral seriousness. Escaped Alone hews to the trend: [...]
